Centre likely to amend IT rules to define deepfakes

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is considering amending the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, to explicitly define deepfakes and make it obligatory for all intermediaries to make “reasonable efforts” to not host them, a move aimed at giving its two advisories on deepfakes legal backing, HT learns. It is understood that the proposed amendments will come up for discussion within the ministry in the coming week.

This follows the three meetings that IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and minister for state Rajeev Chandrasekhar had with social media and technology companies in November and December. MeitY also issued two advisories (February 21 and December 26) and two letters (November 6 and November 7) on the issue.

Also read: ‘Wait till Nov 24’: Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Centre's actions against deepfakes

MeitY is considering three amendments in particular. One, it is looking to define a deepfake as any audio, visual or audio-visual content created, edited or altered through electronic means that can be perceived as true. To safeguard innocuous uses of technology to edit photos, audio and video, the ministry is considering ringfencing the definition to limit it to certain kinds of harms. At this stage, it is not clear what those harms would be. It is considering relevant amendments to rule 3(1)(b)to disallow intermediaries from hosting deepfakes.

Two, in line with Chandrasekhar’s meetings with the industry and his public comments, the ministry is considering making it obligatory for all intermediaries to remind users of disallowed content under rule 3(1)(b) every 15 days in clear and precise language. Eleven kinds of content --- including content that violates intellectual property rights, impersonates another person, is obscene or pornographic or harmful to child, and poses a threat to national security --- are not allowed on platforms under this rule.

Under the extant rules, all intermediaries are required to remind users, at least once a year, of their terms and conditions, privacy policy, and user agreement, and how violating them could lead to deletion of content or the user account itself.

Three, the ministry is considering expanding the definition of “grievance” under the IT Rules so that “complaints” related to user-generated content that violates rule 3(1)(b) can also be sent to the intermediary’s grievance officer directly. This would mean that all content reported through in-app mechanisms would also be sent to the grievance officer.

Both Chandrasekhar and IT Secretary S. Krishnan talked about this during the December 5 meeting with the industry, HT reported on December 6 . Their idea was that the user should not have to go back and forth with the platform unnecessarily and s/he should be able to escalate the complaint to the grievance officer in one go so that if needed, the complaint can be escalated to the government appointed grievance appellate committee (GAC) in one go. GACs, under the Rules, cannot consider any grievances that have first not been addressed by the intermediary’s grievance officer.

In the meeting, several companies, including Meta, Sharechat, YouTube and Jio, had said that this would flood the grievance officer and/or the GACs with complaints.

Currently, a “grievance” is defined as “any complaint, whether regarding any content, any duties of an intermediary or publisher under the Act, or other matters pertaining to the computer resource of an intermediary or publisher, as the case may be”.