Know your laws: How new IT rules aim to protect users against AI crimes

The IT Ministry notified the Amended Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules on February 10, and intermediaries have only 10 days to update their user policies and add tech-based tools ahead of implementation on February 20.

Whether it is celebrity deepfakes, child pornography or the more recent outcry over the use of Grok and other Generative AI platforms to create 'real looking' and 'misleading' 'obscene and nude' images and videos, there has been a longstanding demand in India to take action against Deepfakes and regulate GenAI.

Now, after extensive deliberations and public debate, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notified the Amended Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules on February 10. The rules come into force on February 20, giving only 10 days for IT intermediaries to update their user policies, add tech based tools and ensure implementation.

These rules, for the first time, clearly define "synthetically generated information" as meaning "any audio, visual or audio-visual information" "which is artificially or algorithmically created, generated, modified or altered using a computer resource, in a manner that such information appears to be real, authentic or true and depicts or portrays any individual or event in a manner that is, or is likely to be perceived as indistinguishable from a natural person or real-world event".

At the same time, it makes the distinction that "routine or good-faith editing, formatting, enhancement, technical correction, colour adjustment, noise reduction, transcription, or compression that does not materially alter, distort, or misrepresent" the original content would not be counted as synthetic content.

This means that if you use any GenAI product like ChatGPT or even old school Photoshop tools to create 'synthetic' images and videos, which can look like the real thing, such content has to be clearly labelled as 'AI generated'. Otherwise, your content can be blocked or taken down, and your social media profile can also be suspended, or blocked.

The social media platform that you use will also make it mandatory and include tools to automatically flag and label any such uploaded content as 'synthetic'.