The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is drafting a new AI bill that will make it mandatory for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X to include watermarks and labels on content.
 "India's AI law may focus on innovation, skip penalties for violations")
Vasudha Mukherjee New Delhi
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is drafting a new law focused on artificial intelligence (AI), which places special emphasis on recognising the significant benefits of the technology and not prescribing criminal penalties for violations, reported The Indian Express. The law will be a standalone law and will mandate social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X to include watermarks and labels on AI-generated content.
MeitY is also considering a legal framework that would mandate companies developing large-scale language models to train their systems on Indian language- and context-specific content.
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The debate over AI content warnings has been heating up since last year, when it came under scrutiny in India after deepfake videos of actors and citizens surfaced and AI systems such as Google's Gemini gave inconsistent responses to politicians, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Development of AI Law in India
Last November, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav announced plans to regulate the spread of deepfakes on social media, labelling them a “threat to democracy.” Vaishnav highlighted the government's strategy as focusing on detecting, preventing, reporting and raising public awareness about deepfakes.
On March 1, MeitY also issued an advisory making labelling of AI models under testing mandatory and banning illegal content. This directive was strengthened by the ministry's recent advisory mandating uniform labelling of all AI-generated content.
In May, IT Secretary S Krishnan offered further reassurance to the industry, saying the government is looking to regulate AI but won't stifle innovation. Reflecting on the approach taken in the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP), Krishnan said, “We will ensure that in future, both the interests of innovation and the protection of vital interests are taken into account.”
What AI warning labels are tech companies putting on them?
Meta announced earlier this year that it was developing a tool to identify “invisible markers” in AI-generated content, in line with standards set by the Content Provenance and Authenticity Coalition (C2PA), where the company is based in the U.S. The effort also aims to label images from major AI developers, including Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and Shutterstock.
Meta said in April that it would “start adding 'AI Information' labels to a broader range of video, audio and image content when it detects industry-standard AI image indicators or when users reveal that they are uploading AI-generated content.”
Similarly, TikTok, which is banned in India, in May began using C2PA's digital watermarking technology, “Content Authentication,” to automatically label AI-generated videos and images.
Adobe, Arm, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic have also launched C2PA, aiming to provide context and history of digital media through a comprehensive system.
Until India's bill is drafted, it's unclear how much the new law will affect efforts already underway by the world's largest tech companies.
