Deepfakes: Compliance on advisories has been mixed, tighter IT rules in a week: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar addressing a press conference on January 16 in New Delhi | Source: Moneycontrol

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on January 16 said compliance with the multiple advisories the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued to social media platforms on deepfakes has been "mixed".

He also added that tighter IT rules are likely to be implemented in the next 7 days to tackle the issue.

As of now, on the deepfakes issue, the government has issued multiple advisories to social media companies urging them to remove such content from their platforms, and also have urged these platforms to amend their terms and conditions and align them with the IT Rules.

Specifically, in the advisories, the government has asked platforms to list out the 11 types of content that users cannot publish on platforms. However, as of now, apart from the social media platform Sharechat, no other social media company has made that change in their terms and conditions.

"We will wait and see the compliance of the advisory. If we find that there is still some noncompliance or partial compliance, we will follow it up and notify new rules where we will prescribe social media companies to mandatorily amend their terms and conditions and align with the said rules," Chandrasekhar said while addressing a press conference.

Apart from that, the government is also planning a separate amendment to the IT Rules to tackle the issue of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on social media platforms.

Chandrasekhar said that the IT Rules will be amended to make it mandatory for social media platforms to report to law enforcement the presence of CSAM content on the platform.

As Moneycontrol had reported earlier, the government intends to invoke the "bystander rule" of the POCSO Act on social media platforms. This rule imposes a mandatory duty on all bystanders and other witnesses of child abuse or rape to report such incidents to the police.

Semiconductor interest

Chandrasekhar who was addressing the press conference on the occasion of National Startup Day, said that the Indian startup ecosystem is the third largest in the world, and is poised to increase from 1 lakh startups to 10 lakh startups and 112 unicorns to 10,000 unicorns.

On the semiconductor industry, Chandrasekhar said that after Tata announced setting up a semiconductor plant in Dholera, Gujarat, there has been massive interest in setting up similar plants in the country.

"Without revealing names there are two very serious fab proposals, four OSAT proposals (OSAT is also known as assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP) units) and three compound proposals whose analysis are currently underway,"  Chandrasekhar.

DPDP Rules behind schedule

The IT ministry is also set to come up with the rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which was passed in Parliament in August 2023.

If the DPDP Act in its current form provides a framework for the legislation, the rule-making process will shape its contours.

Also read: New DPDP rules may mandate immediate reporting of data breaches to Data Protection Board

Chandrasekhar said that the rules should be out for a month-long consultation by the end of January.

"Because the elections are coming up, whether it will be notified before the elections, I cannot predict that," he added.