India's Approach To Regulate Synthetic And AI-generated Content: How It Aligns With Global Deepfake Regulation Frameworks

As synthetic and AI-generated content is becoming increasingly deceptive and dangerous, regulators across the globe are shifting gears from merely issuing guidance and directives to legislating on legally enforceable obligations such as labelling, instructing takedown notices, election-period restrictions and imposing criminal penalties for intimate deepfakes.

India is joining the global effort with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) proposing amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

The proposed amendments once implemented, will mandate visible labels, persistent metadata, uploader declarations and verification obligations, signalling a shift from good to have AI-policies to regulatory compliance requirements. For businesses, this essentially means concrete compliance obligations like declaring synthetic and AI-generated information, labelling synthetic