Government plans AI rules on safety, deepfakes within a month: Vaishnaw

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday said the Centre will bring out a consultation paper on AI regulations in a month, dealing with aspects like AI safety, a human-first approach, and deepfakes. He added that the time for such a framework has come, and that industry must shoulder the bulk of the responsibility.

The move assumes significance as concerns over deepfakes, cyber threats and the psychological effects of AI chatbots are growing, and leading researchers have repeatedly called for stronger safeguards. Across the world, governments and regulators are racing to keep pace with fast-moving AI, with the European Union already enacting a comprehensive Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.

While speaking at an event on the release of the World Development Report, Vaishnaw noted that deepfakes are a “nuisance which can cause huge problems in society”, and added that their quality is improving every day. The India Launch of the World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence was organised by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), through the IndiaAI Mission, in collaboration with the World Bank Group.

“People believe them, and it sets a totally wrong precedent. It sets a totally wrong narrative, and people get lured into doing wrong things and believing wrong things,” he said, adding the upcoming consultation paper would deal with AI harms and deepfakes as a big area of focus.

“I’ll request the department to come out with a regulation-focused consultation paper, which focuses on safety. That’s the most important point...safety-related to AI use,” Vaishnaw said.

Vaishnaw further said that the upcoming consultation paper will form the basis for AI regulations, and added that the time has come for India to have such a framework. Other issues that the consultation paper would prioritise are AI harms, including deepfakes, a human-first approach, skilling, as well as a commitment to leave no person behind, the Minister elaborated. “Humanity has to be the most important part of change that has happened,” Vaishnaw said.

Vaishnaw made it clear that the industry must shoulder the bulk of the responsibility. “The industry has to take the primary responsibility,” he said, listing out issues such as cybersecurity, safety, user harm, psychological disorders and deepfakes. “So we’ll come out with that paper in a month’s time from now, and based on that we’ll go forward with the regulation,” Vaishnaw said.

In February this year, the government brought in stricter obligations for online platforms on handling AI-generated and synthetic content, including deepfakes, saying platforms, such as X and Instagram, must take down within three hours any such content flagged by a competent authority or court. The government notified amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, that formally define AI-generated and synthetic content.

The Centre also mooted stricter disclosure norms for AI-generated content, proposing tweaks to IT rules that would require clear and continuous labels identifying synthetically generated information to be visible throughout the entire duration of the visual display.