Centre fixes three-hour deadline for social media platforms to take down flagged AI content

The Union government on Tuesday directed social media platforms to remove artificial intelligence-generated and altered content, including deepfake videos, within three hours of it being flagged by a competent authority or the courts.

Deepfakes are techniques to manipulate audio and video content with the help of artificial intelligence software to show people saying or doing things that they never said or did. The content is made to appear as realistic as possible and is often used with malicious intent.

On Tuesday, the Union government notified amendments to the 2021 Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules, which formally define AI-generated and synthetic content.

Issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the notice said that new rules will come into effect from February 20.

The amendments include definitions of “audio, visual or audio-visual information” and “synthetically-generated information”, while covering AI-created or altered content that appears authentic.

However, routine editing, accessibility improvements, and good-faith educational and design work have been excluded from the definitions.

Significant changes include treating synthetic content as “information”, while AI-generated content will be treated on par with other information for determining unlawful acts under IT rules, PTI reported.

Other changes include the mandatory labelling of AI content.

The notification also said that social media platforms enabling the creation or sharing of synthetic content...

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