A senior official in Narendra Modi's government says social media companies should be held accountable for AI-generated “deepfakes” posted on their platforms by following “very clear and well-defined rules” as India prepares for general elections this year. He warned that he would be questioned.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, said India was “earlier to wake up” than other countries to the dangers posed by deepfakes because of its large online population. Out of a total population of 1.4 billion, 870 million people are connected to the Internet, and 600 million people use social media.
“We are the world's largest democracy [and] We are clearly deeply concerned about the troubling impact of transnational actors using disinformation, disinformation and deepfakes to cause problems for our democracies,” Chandrasekhar told the Financial Times. Ta. “We have been paying attention to this problem earlier than other countries, because the negative impact of this problem is much greater than in small countries.”
The warning against fakes comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is seeking re-election for a third term in parliamentary polls scheduled for April and May, broached the subject in recent remarks. The move comes as the US government exercises regulatory influence over companies that serve one of the planet's largest corporations. Internet user population.
Researchers have warned that deepfakes – images, videos and audio created by cheap artificial intelligence tools that can convincingly reproduce humans – pose a growing threat to democracy. Fake clips have already been used to influence politics and elections in the UK, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan and Slovakia.
Meanwhile, social media platforms are developing rules to combat deepfakes. Meta, X, and TikTok are now required to remove or label deceptively manipulated media. Meta and Google recently announced policies requiring campaigns to disclose whether their political ads have been digitally altered.
Some countries are considering cracking down on deepfakes, for example, not only in politics but also in the context of pornography. For example, the United States has no federal law explicitly governing this technology. However, several state lawmakers are pushing legislation to combat political deepfakes.
New Delhi has issued an advisory to technology companies that was published on December 26 and sent to social media and messaging platforms operating in India, including YouTube, X, WhatsApp, Telegram, Snap and local social network Koo. complied with Indian laws regarding illegal and unlawful content. Make this clear in your Terms of Service and User Agreement.
India's IT rules, drafted in 2021, also criminalize content deemed harmful to children, threatening national security or spreading misinformation, among other restrictions on free speech.
The directive requires platforms to “identify and remove false information that is demonstrably false, deceptive, or misleading in nature and that impersonates others, including that created using deepfakes.” I warned you.
“Our approach to deepfakes after the Prime Minister cautioned against deepfakes is that the laws of the country prohibit any user on the platform from hosting false information, including deepfakes, and that “It's a platform where if a user does that, he or she is breaking the law,” Chandrasekhar said.
He added: “By allowing users to continue posting that content, platforms are violating the law.”
He said people made the mistake of confusing the United States, where First Amendment rights are “absolute and unconditional,” with other countries, including India.
“We are actually creating a form of technical regulation that is halfway between the U.S. and Europe,” the official said. “The United States is completely left to the market. Europe is completely citizen-oriented. And we basically say, 'We love innovation and we're going to encourage innovation, but small and medium-sized businesses. and we want to protect our users.”
In India's recent elections in 2014 and 2019, social media played a key role in the winning campaigns of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win this year's elections in the face of a weak and divided opposition.
The Indian National Congress has accused platforms such as YouTube of “shadowbanning” some of its content, including speeches by MP Rahul Gandhi, while civil society groups say tech companies have too easily kowtowed to PM Modi. India is a sensitive market for Silicon Valley companies. Government removal order. In recent years, social platforms have been ordered to remove posts criticizing the Indian government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and blocked posts criticizing Mr. Modi.
India is one of the largest global markets for Meta's platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Google and its YouTube video channel. Civil society groups have accused the Modi government of being overzealous in cracking down on the internet as part of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression in India.
In a letter sent this month to Mr. Chandrasekhar and other officials responsible for developing government IT policy, the Internet Freedom Foundation, a non-governmental organization, said in a letter it sent this month to Mr. Chandrasekhar and other officials responsible for developing government IT policy. “This could lead to arbitrary censorship.”
Chandrasekhar rejected the government's claims of overreach, saying, “No one can claim that child sexual abuse material, deepfakes, pedophile or patent-infringing content violates anyone's rights.” Stated.
“India is leading the way on this issue and platforms are being increasingly held accountable and held accountable for any illegal activities that occur on their platforms,” he said.
