MeitY recently issued an advisory to all the companies associated with AI to regulate the use of AI.
Recently, after Google’s Gemini produced a controversial image against a prompt that was asked by a user there are questions arose in people’s minds on the reliability of AI. This has also slowed down the development of AI and has created trust issues among AI users as it can create problems for them. However, the Indian government has reacted to this issue before it can escalate further as the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued a news advisory for prior approval of AI products before its launch in India.
The advisory was sent to all the tech companies that are associated with producing AI tools and software on March 1. The advisory suggested they label it as under-trial AI and also ensure that no unlawful content is uploaded or hosted by the site. Along with this the advisory also warned the companies of penal proceedings if found non-compliance with the advisor.
The advisory noted “All intermediaries or platforms to ensure that use of Artificial Intelligence model(s)/LLM/Generative AI, software(s) or algorithm(s) on or through its computer resource does not permit its users to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any unlawful content,”
This notice is the second issue by MeitY in months and is a continuation of the first notice issued which was directed to curb social media platforms to curb AI-powered misinformation fake news. Rajeev Chandrasekhar while speaking to ANI, confirmed the development and also confirmed that the advisory will help curb all the digital platforms to be “very careful” on deploying under-trial AI models on the internet.
He said to ANI that “… By saying that the platform is under testing or unreliable does not absolve them (digital platforms) from the consequences of the law, especially the criminal law. So, we have advised them that any such platform must have labels that it is under testing. Most importantly, it must inform the consumer through a consent mechanism that this platform may output erroneous and unreliable information,”
while he was pointing at the recent controversy of Google Gemini he added that the platform was “clearly in violation of the law” as it produced “unlawful content” referring to responses related to PM Modi.
The advisory is not going well with the critiques as Medianama’s Nikhil Pahwa critiqued the government by posting on X which goes as follows “I’m sure someone as knowledgeable about tech as @Rajeev_GoI knows this, AI model outputs are a function of input data,… and context: so how can a bot be liable or even in any way responsible for the output?… Most of these rules are illegal. MeitY is acting this way because platforms did not take the government to court for these illegal rules,”
This advisory came after Chandrasekhar had announced that an advisory would be issued to regulate the AI space in India in June or July of last year. There is a significant growth and adoption of AI in India which is also raising concerns for deepfake videos and fake news. There is recent news of deepfake videos of celebrities cricketers and other popular personalities. This year is also the year of general election. Therefore, central is taking action to regulate the use of AI keeping in mind the risk of misinformation.