Govt to soon start work on new legal framework for AI: IT Secy Krishnan

The government will soon begin stakeholder consultations on a dedicated legal framework for artificial intelligence as evolving AI capabilities require a separate regulatory regime, IT Secretary

The government is planning to soon start consultations with stakeholders for a dedicated regulatory framework to contain the pitfalls and excesses of artificial intelligence (AI), Secretary for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology S Krishnan said.

 

“It is a conversation, which has commenced, and my Minister (IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw) and I have both been on record earlier that we will look at AI regulation when the time is right, and it appears that the time is getting right, and we will start looking at it,” Krishan said on the sidelines of the CII Cybersecurity Summit on Friday.

 

The existing provisions of both the Information Technology Act, 2000 as well as the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 have so far proven enough legally to address any concerns around deepfakes and synthetically generated content, he said. With time, as AI got better at making such content and developed other capabilities, an additional regulation or law that could address the new concerns may be necessary, he added.

 

“We have used the IT rules, and other provisions of existing law to address various concerns that AI raises, but now, probably the time has come to look at a separate legislation,” he said.

 

On Friday, Krishnan also said that the government had asked the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team to look into the allegations of data breach at Tata Electronics.

 

The alleged data breach at the company had reportedly exposed sensitive information related to Apple's unreleased iPhone and other devices’ models.