Explained: As govt tightens AI content rules, what must social media platforms & others do

The central government issued guidelines today mandating social media platforms, among others, to clearly label all artificial intelligence–generated or modified content.

Which rules have changed?

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) made amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, on Tuesday.


India’s intermediary framework was first set out in 2011 and later replaced by the 2021 amendments, which expanded due diligence obligations for major social media intermediaries and introduced regulation for digital news and curated audio-visual content.

The latest directions build on these rules, bringing synthetically generated information (SGI), including deepfakes, into a stricter regulatory framework.

What has changed?

Per the new rules, intermediaries must ensure that AI-generated or modified content is labelled or identifiable, either through visible disclosures or embedded metadata.

The rules permit the use of technical measures such as embedded metadata as identifiers to enable flexible compliance while ensuring traceability.

Further, the rules make such identifiers irreversible once they have been applied.

Platforms must also warn users about the consequences of AI misuse at least once every three months.

Further, the government has mandated the deployment of automated tools to detect and prevent the spread of illegal, sexually exploitative, or deceptive AI-generated content.

Previously, a 36-hour window was offered to intermediaries to comply with takedown orders. However, under stricter enforcement measures, platforms must now remove or disable access to AI-generated content within three hours of receiving an order from the court or government.

What are intermediaries?

Entities that store or transmit data on behalf of end users are intermediaries. These include telecom service providers, online marketplaces, search engines, and social media like Jio, Amazon, Google, Meta, etc.

How will the rules be enforced?

The initial phase of enforcement focusess on large social media intermediaries with five million or more registered users in India. This means the rules will largely impact foreign players such as Meta and X (formerly Twitter).

Why now?

These measures come amid the recent Grok controversy where the AI chatbot generated non-consensual explicit deepfakes. The changes also reportedly follow from the centre’s recent consultations with industry bodies such as IAMAI and Nasscom.

The rules will ensure that platforms inform users about SGI and even identify those involved in producing such content.