The Union Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has said that India needs a new law on Artificial Intelligence as the existing Information Technology law was brought in much before generative AI advanced and gained prominence.
Since the AI landscape is changing fast, the need for a new legal framework is being increasingly felt, the minister told news agency PTI in an interview on Tuesday.
The minister said the government is already in discussion with industry representatives to frame a law that strikes a balance between innovation and regulation.
Responding to a question whether a new law from scratch will be formulated or the existing IT law will be amended, the minister said the issue is not a simple one.
“It’s a very complex topic. Certain things have been done under the IT Act framework, but I do think that there is a requirement for a new law because the world of AI is very different from the world when the IT Act was enacted in 2000,” Vaishnaw told PTI.
“We are discussing with the industry…as always, our objective and approach will be to balance innovation and regulation in a manner that innovation keeps happening, while our citizens remain safe,” he added.
The minister’s remarks on the need for a new law has come at a time when governments and regulators have been dealing with a surge in misinformation and deepfakes accelerated by the advancements in generative AI.
The Central government has already made some amendments to the existing legal frameworks to deal with the challenge of deepfakes.
The government earlier this year notified amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and tightened regulations that make it mandatory for online platforms to remove deepfakes and similar harmful content within three hours of the same being flagged by competent authorities or courts.
The government has also proposed stricter disclosure norms for AI-generated content, in order for clear and continuous labeling of synthetically generated information.