words per minute
34
Preetirahghav
00:00
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The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, add a critical requirement for social media platforms: AI-generated imagery must now be labelled prominently. Since the draft rules were released in October, there have been some improvements in this mandate: it is no longer prescribing a set size for such a disclosure, nor is it applicable to any AI-generated imagery that does not seek to pass off as the real thing. AI-generated imagery has flooded users’ feeds and they have a right to know that this imagery is not real. The requirement that users declare synthetically generated content as such is welcome. As India approaches the AI Impact Summit with a stated intent to regulate AI only insofar as necessary, the requirement shows considerable restraint. Since the technology for creating synthetic imagery is rapidly evolving, the government will, however, have to revisit parts of the Rules that impose proactive detection of synthetic content by platforms — after all, while tech platforms are generally able to detect synthetic media automatically, this capability is constantly challenged by the billions of dollars being invested into ironing out the flaws that these detection mechanisms rely upon