India has ordered social media platforms to step up policing of deepfakes and other AI-generated impersonations, while sharply shortening the time they have to comply with takedown orders. It’s a move that could reshape how global tech firms moderate content in one of the world’s largest and fastest growing market for internet services.
The changes, published (PDF) on Tuesday as amendments to India’s 2021 IT Rules, bring deepfakes under a formal regulatory framework, mandating the labelling and traceability of synthetic audio and visual content, while also slashing compliance timelines for platforms, including a three-hour deadline for official takedown orders and a two-hour window for certain urgent user complaints.
India’s importance as a digital market amplifies the impact of the new rules. With over a billion internet users and a predominantly young population, the South Asian nation is a critical market for platforms like Meta and YouTube, making it likely that compliance measures adopted in India will influence global product and moderation practices.
Under the amended rules, social media platforms that allow users to upload or share audio-visual content must require disclosures on whether material is synthetically generated, deploy tools to verify those claims, and ensure that deepfakes are clearly labelled and embedded with traceable provenance data.
Certain categories of synthetic content — including deceptive impersonations, non-consensual intimate imagery, and material linked to serious crimes — are barred outright in the rules. Non-compliance, particularly in cases flagged by authorities or users, can expose companies to greater legal liability by jeopardising their safe-harbour protections under Indian law.
The rules lean heavily on automated systems to meet those obligations. Platforms are expected to deploy technical tools to verify user disclosures, identify, and label deepfakes, and prevent the creation or sharing of prohibited synthetic content in the first place.
“The amended IT Rules mark a more calibrated approach to regulating AI-generated deepfakes,” said Rohit Kumar, founding partner at New Delhi-base …