New Delhi, 10 February (HS): The government on Tuesday brought in stricter obligations for online platforms on handling artificial intelligence-generated and synthetic content, including deepfakes, directing platforms such as X and Instagram to take down such content within three hours if flagged by a competent authority or a court.

The amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, were notified by the government to formally define AI-generated and synthetic content. The new rules will come into force from February 20, 2026.

As per the amendments, “audio, visual or audio-visual information” and “synthetically-generated information” include content that is created or altered using artificial intelligence and appears to be real or authentic. However, routine editing, accessibility enhancements and good-faith educational or design-related work have been excluded from this definition.

Under the revised rules, synthetic content has been brought under the definition of “information” and AI-generated content will be treated at par with other forms of information for determining unlawful acts under the IT rules.

The amendments reduce the timeline for platforms to act on government or court orders from 36 hours to three hours, according to a gazette notification issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The rules also mandate labelling of AI-generated content. Platforms that enable the creation or sharing of synthetic content are required to ensure that such material is clearly and prominently labelled and embedded with permanent metadata or identifiers, where technically feasible.

The notification further states that platforms must deploy automated tools to prevent the circulation of illegal AI-generated content, including deceptive material, sexually exploitative or non-consensual content, false documents, child abuse material, explosives-related content and impersonation.

It also specifies that intermediaries cannot allow the removal or suppression of AI labels or metadata once they have been applied.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar