India to make new regulations to counter deepfakes: minister

NEW DELHI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- India's Federal Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw Thursday said that the government will soon come out with a new set of regulations to deal with deepfakes.

The minister said that accountability for such content will lie both with creators and the platform on which it has been hosted and the government will also look at penalties for both creators and platforms.

"We will have a new set of regulations for deepfakes in the form of bringing new rules or new law or through amending existing framework," Vaishnaw told media.

He said that work on this will begin immediately and it is expected to finish drafting the regulation in the next few weeks.

Vaishnaw met the representatives from academia, industry bodies and social media companies on the need to ensure effective responses to deepfake.

According to the ministry, within the next 10 days, actionable items on the four pillars - detection of deepfakes, prevention of the spread of misinformation, strengthening the reporting mechanisms and creating awareness among the people - would be identified.

Deepfake is a video of a person made by using AI tools to digitally alter faces and bodies so that they appear to be someone else. It is typically done maliciously or to spread false information.

Recently deepfake videos of Indian film actresses surfaced on social media, triggering an outrage in the South Asian country.