New regulatory mechanism, penalties for deep fakes: Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw
Ajay Banerjee
New Delhi, November 23
Union Minister for Electronics and Information Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday termed deep fakes as ‘threat to democracy and society’.
He laid out a four-point plan to tackle the threat, including having stricter regulatory mechanism with penalties of fiscal and criminal nature.
The minister was talking to media after a meeting with social media companies, users of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, Nasscom and professors who work in the field of AI.
“We need to take urgent steps,” Vaishnaw said, adding, “We have agreed that we will come up with clear actionable new regulatory mechanism. This could be in form of new law, or amendment of existing rules, whichever is better,” he added.
“The regulatory mechanism will have four pillars. The first is detection of deep fakes and deep misinformation; second is to prevent the spread of deep fakes once they are posted on internet platforms; how to strengthen the reporting mechanism for such deep fakes and lastly to create awareness.
“We will be looking to prevent the harm and also have options for users to know what is fake,” Vaishnaw said, adding that the companies understood that posting deep fakes was ‘not free speech’ and was harmful for society and agreed to greater regulation.
“We will start drafting the regulations today itself and they will be ready in a short time,” said the minister, adding, “We will soon be uploading an email ID by which people can provide their opinion.”
Extensive set of technologies are available to detect deep fakes, said the minister, as he cited experts who were at the meeting. “People making deep fakes are using better and better technologies and the challenge will be that.” At the meeting there was discussion on water-marking and labelling videos. Also, there was discussion on disallowing apps that enable making deep fake videos.
The meeting had come about after the ministry issued an advisory to social media companies asking these platforms to take stronger action against AI-generated deepfake content.
After the advisory, the companies have taken the matter very seriously, said the minister, adding, “They have started taking steps and assured us that they shared our concern and also of different geographies.”
The government’s advisory sent to social media platforms a few days ago sternly warned them that failing to promptly remove deepfake content from their platforms could lead to consequences, such as losing safe harbour (immunity) provisions. Safe harbour provisions grant legal protection to internet platforms against user-generated content.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently expressed concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence to create deepfakes and urged the media to raise awareness about this growing problem.
President Droupadi Murmu, addressing an event on November 17. said the use of generative artificial intelligence by criminals and the problem of deep-fake, means police officers have to always be updated in the field of technology.
