The News Freedom
www.thenewsfreedom.in
New Delhi, November 23
Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Thursday said that a new set of regulations will be introduced soon to tackle deepfakes. After chairing a meeting with representatives from academia, industry bodies and social media companies on the need to ensure effective response to deepfake, IT Minister Vaishnaw said that deepfake has emerged as a serious threat to democracy and social institutions across the world.” Propagation of deepfake content through social media platforms has aggravated this challenge,” he said.
He said that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has, from time to time, advised social media intermediaries to exercise due diligence and take expeditious action against deepfakes. Commenting on rising incidents of deepfakes while addressing the press conference, Vaishnaw said that social media platforms agree that clear actionable work is needed to detect and prevent deepfakes and strengthen reporting
He said that it was decided that the government, academia, social media companies and NASSCOM will jointly work towards responding to deepfake. “It was further agreed that within the next 10 days, actionable items on the following four pillars including detection, prevention, reporting and awareness would be identified,” he said.
Further elaborating about the four pillars, the IT Minister said that deepfake content should be detected before and after such content is posted, there should be an effective mechanism for preventing propagation of deepfake content, effective and expeditious reporting and grievance redressal mechanism should be available and mass awareness on the issue of deepfake should be created.
In addition to it, Vaishnaw said that with immediate effect, MeitY will commence an exercise for assessing and drafting necessary regulations to curb the menace of deepfake. “For this purpose, MeitY will invite comments from the public on the MyGov portal. A follow-up meeting with relevant stakeholders will be held again in the first week of December 2023 to finalise the 4-pillared structure. Government of India remains committed to combat the growing threat of deepfake by leveraging technology and fostering public awareness,” he added.