Deepfakes threat to democracy, says govt, prepares 4-point counter plan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 23

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday termed deepfakes a “threat to democracy and society”. He laid out a four-point plan to tackle the threat, including having stricter regulatory mechanism with penalties of fiscal and criminal nature.

How it’ll work

• Detection of deepfakes and misinformation
• Checking spread of deepfakes on Internet platforms
• Strengthening the reporting mechanism
• Creating awareness in this regard among the public

The minister was talking to the media after a meeting with social media companies, users of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Nasscom and professors who work in the field of AI.

“We need to take very urgent steps,” Vaishnaw said, adding that “we have agreed to come up with an actionable new regulatory mechanism”. This could be in form of a new law or amendment to the existing rules, whichever was better, he said. The regulatory mechanism will have four pillars. The first will be detection of deepfakes and deep misinformation; the second will be to prevent the spread of deepfakes once they are posted on Internet platforms; the third will be to strengthen the reporting mechanism for such deepfakes and the fourth to create awareness.

Vaishnaw said the companies understood that posting deepfakes was “not free speech” and was harmful for society, and agreed to greater regulation.

“We will start drafting the regulations today itself and these will be ready in a short time frame,” said the minister, adding that they would soon upload an email ID on which people could provide their opinion.

Technology was available to detect deepfakes, the minister said, citing experts at the meeting. He said the challenge was that people making deepfakes were using better technology.

At the meeting, there was discussion on water-marking and labelling videos. There was also a discussion on disallowing apps that enable making deepfake videos.

The meeting followed an advisory issued by the ministry to social media companies asking them to take strict action against AI-generated deepfake content.

The government’s advisory sent to social media platforms a few days ago sternly warned them that failing to promptly remove deepfake content from their platforms could lead to consequences such as losing safe harbour (immunity) provisions.

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