Union minister of Electronics and Information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on saturday said the government will soon meet social media platforms on the deepfake issue and asserted that the safe harbor immunity clause will not apply if platforms do not take adequate steps to remove deepfakes. Vaishnaw said that the government had recently issued a notice to companies on the deepfake issue, and the platforms responded but added that the firms will have to be more aggressive in taking action on such content.
“They are taking steps…but we think that many more steps will have to be taken. And we are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platforms…Maybe in the next 3-4 days, we’ll call them for brainstorming on that and make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing it (deepfakes), and cleaning up their system,” Vaishnaw said. Asked if big platforms like Meta and google would be called for the meeting, the minister replied in the affirmative. The statement comes a day after PM narendra modi expressed concerns over the deepfakes and cautioned that the artificial intelligence (AI) technology can lead to a big crisis and stoke discontent in society.
“In a diverse society like ours, deepfakes can cause a big crisis and even stoke the fire of discontent as people generally trust anything associated with the media in the same way anyone clad in ‘gedua’ (saffron) tends to get respect from others,” the prime minister said. “There is a very big section of society which does not have a parallel verification system,” Modi added. Vaishnaw also made it clear that the safe harbour immunity that platforms currently enjoy under the IT Act will not be applicable unless they take adequate action. “The safe harbor clause, which most social media platforms have been enjoying…that does not apply if they do not take adequate steps for removing deepfakes from their platforms,” he said.
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