The government has introduced stricter rules for social media platforms to tackle deepfakes and other AI-generated impersonations.
The amendments to the 2021 IT Rules were published this week and will come into effect on February 20.
Social media companies must act within three hours of receiving official takedown orders.
The government has introduced stricter rules for social media platforms to tackle deepfakes and other AI-generated impersonations. Under the updated IT Rules, platforms will now have to label synthetic audio and video content and remove certain harmful material within just three hours of receiving official orders. The amendments to the 2021 IT Rules were published this week and will come into effect on February 20. The new framework formally brings deepfakes under regulation. Platforms that allow users to upload or share audio-visual content must ensure that AI-generated material is clearly disclosed, labelled, and traceable.
SurveyThe rules also reduce compliance timelines. Social media companies must act within three hours of receiving official takedown orders, reports TechCrunch. In some urgent cases flagged by users, platforms may have as little as two hours to respond.
Certain types of synthetic content are completely banned. These include deceptive impersonations, non-consensual intimate imagery, and content linked to serious crimes. Companies that fail to comply risk losing their safe harbor protections.
To meet these requirements, platforms are expected to use automated tools to verify user disclosures, identify deepfakes, label them clearly, and prevent the sharing of prohibited content.
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‘The amended IT Rules mark a more calibrated approach to regulating AI-generated deepfakes,’ said Rohit Kumar, founding partner at New Delhi-based policy consulting firm The Quantum Hub. ‘The significantly compressed grievance timelines – such as the two- to three-hour takedown windows – will materially raise compliance burdens and merit close scrutiny, particularly given that non-compliance is linked to the loss of safe harbor protections.’
Aprajita Rana, a partner at AZB & Partners, noted that the revised rules focus specifically on AI-generated audio-visual content rather than all online information. However, she warned that mandating intermediaries to take down content within three hours of becoming aware of it marks a shift away from established free speech principles.
Meanwhile, Digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation cautioned that the short timelines could lead to over-removal of content, the report mentioned. ‘These impossibly short timelines eliminate any meaningful human review,’ the group said.
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