New Technology, New Rules: With the fast adoption of generative technologies and artificial intelligence, the government’s swift cognisance will pave way for its unbiased and responsible use, experts opined.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent back-to-back advisories to social media firms to comply with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

Targeted at deepfakes, MEITY directed social media firms to crack down on fabricated clips of people, or deepfakes, which show the dark side of general intelligence.

Proactive Policy

The advisory, and the recent Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 passed in the monsoon session of the Indian Parliament showcases the government’s “proactive role” in regulating AI and Gen AI, Krishna Vij, Business Head for IT Staffing at TeamLease Digital told Republic Business.

“Prioritising bias prevention and regulating technology like deepfakes reflects the government’s commitment to an ethical, transparent, and accountable digital environment,” she said.

Collaboration among policymakers, industry, and the public, guided by MeitY's insights, is vital for shaping these rules and ensuring a responsible digital future, she added.

Cybercrimes are now socially-threating

Contemporary challenges in cybercrime, data protection, internet platform competition, online safety, and AI impact have changed the ecosystem socially, with incidents of sexual offence in the Metaverse.

Before the rape incident reported by a 16-year old in the UK, 43-year old Nina Jain Patel in 2022 reported such an incident. She made a Metaverse avatar as part of her investigation into the psychological and physiological impacts of Extended Reality (XR).

Such incidents threaten the digital participation of women and children, as well as people of different ethnicities and class.

Amit Jaju, Senior Managing Director at Ankura Consulting Group said the proposed amendments to India's IT Act signify a pivotal shift towards a more secure and equitable digital ecosystem nationally as well as internationally.

“By mandating AI platforms to ensure bias-free model training, we set a precedent for technological integrity that addresses deep fakes and synthetic content concerns,” he added.

The government’s cognisance in the light of these incidents also poses a “clarion call” for companies to proactively refine their AI frameworks, ensuring their algorithms are transparent, ethical, and accountable, Jaju said, emphasising on the importance of sandboxing and stress testing to comply with these standards.

New Language, New Regulations

Leaders also anticipated regulations to enforce unbiased algorithms and large language models (LLMs).

India has also forayed into the development of generative models, with IIIT’s BharatGPT and Bhavish Agarwal’s Krutim AI.

Arindam Das Sarkar, MD of AI video analytics firm Mirasys India said, “It is expected that the regulations would enforce that any AI-driven algorithm or language model should be free from any bias, which should ideally be a prerequisite to any kind of AI-integrated monitoring and surveillance.”

The company said its data process is end-to-end encrypted so that only the designated authorities and individuals get access to the same.

The amendments must also take into consideration the privacy aspect of all individuals, Sarkar added.

Accountability in Virtual World

Karunya Sampath, Co-founder and CEO of software firm Payoda Technologies said new guidelines on IT rules will create way for safer internet landscape, emphasising trust and accountability.

“These revisions are set to extend regulatory oversight to encompass artificial intelligence and generative AI models, which is a positive move towards addressing deepfakes and synthetic content and imposing guidelines for platforms dealing with financial transactions,” she said.

It's not just about compliance; it's about shaping a responsible, inclusive, and secure technological future for all, she added.
The AI landscape is also seeing conflict from media publications over unattributed use of their content to generate new work.

Anirudh A., founder of consultancy firm Atomic Asher advocated for an AI-based ministry, which “will be able to address impending friction to do with intellectual property and ethical aspects, as well as ensure that innovation and value creation remains high.”