Draft AI regulation framework to be released by July: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Government to release draft AI regulatory framework by June-July to harness technology for economic growth and mitigate risks.

The Government will come out with a draft regulatory framework for artificial intelligence (AI) by June-July, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on February 20.

Addressing the opening session of the two-day Nasscom leadership summit in Mumbai, he said, "The Government is working on a draft AI regulation framework that is set for release in June or July this year. The intention is to harness AI for economic growth and address potential risks and harms."

Mr. Chandrasekhar said the Government is also determined to train individuals who are skilled in AI. "We will fully exploit the potential of AI but set up the guardrails as well to prevent misuse. We are today seen by the world at the forefront to harness AI technology. We are all for deploying AI across use cases, from farm to factories and we want to use AI for economic growth, healthcare, agriculture, and farmer productivity," the Minister said.

The Government has been planning to release an AI regulation framework for sometime. Even in May 2023, he had shared plans to release the first draft of the framework. However, it is yet to be released. "Given the ubiquitous and boundary-agnostic nature of the Internet and AI, it is important that there is a global governance framework that deals with safety and trust of AI," he said.

Earlier, Mr. Chandrasekhar had said the Government’s approach to regulating AI would involve establishing principles and a comprehensive list of harms and criminalities related to the technology. Instead of regulating AI at specific points in its development, he had said the Government favoured setting clear guidelines for platforms with a focus on addressing issues like bias and misuse during model training.

On the rising internet usage, he said the already 900 million strong internet population is going to touch 1.2 billion soon. But the Minister did not offer a timeline.