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After actor’s viral video, IT ministry sends social media firms two letters on deepfake regulations
The development came a day after a viral fake video of Telugu actor Rashmika Mandanna sparked concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence and its potential to further gender violence online
The Union ministry of electronics and IT on Tuesday directed social media platforms to ensure that they act to weed out misinformation and deepfakes as mandated by Indian law, a day after a viral fake video of Telugu actor Rashmika Mandanna sparked concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence and its potential to further gender violence online.
The ministry’s two letters, dated November 6 and 7, were issued by the cyber laws division of the ministry as follow-ups to the advisory on deepfakes sent in February. They reminded the social media platforms of their obligations under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code), 2021.
“As per the laws in force, such content/information which violates the IT Act/Rules, should be removed or access disabled upon receipt of court orders or notification from the Appropriate Government or its authorised agency or based on a complaint made by the impersonated individual or person authorised by him in this behalf,” one of the letters said. HT has seen copies of both the letters.
The letter dated November 6 did not give a timeline to remove such content or cite specific rules. It, however, cited Section 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000, under which anyone who uses a communication device or a computer resource to cheat by “personating” can be punished with three years in jail and a fine of up to ₹1 lakh.
“In the case of this particular deepfake, section 66D may not be applicable since the element of cheating as understood under the Indian Penal Code, or acting dishonestly to gain an advantage is hard, if not impossible, to establish,” Priyadarshi Banerjee, partner at Delhi-based Banerjee & Grewal Advocates, said.
The letters also warned that the platforms could lose their safe harbour in case of non-compliance. To be sure, only courts can determine if an intermediary can lose its safe harbour protection. Deepfakes need to be removed within 36 hours of being reported, the ministry said in a separate statement on Tuesday. “It is a legal obligation for online platforms to prevent the spread of misinformation by any user under the Information Technology (IT) rules, 2021. They are further mandated to remove such content within 36 hours upon receiving a report from either a user or government authority,” the statement quoted junior electronics and IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar as saying.
To be sure, the law mandates intermediaries to remove violating content within 36 hours only after receiving a court or government order to that effect. When a user, or someone on behalf of the user, raises a grievance, the earliest it needs to be resolved is 72 hours.
The exception to this is laid down in rule 3(2)(b), where on receiving a complaint from a user or someone on his or her behalf about content that has “any material which exposes the private area of such individual, shows such individual in full or partial nudity, or show such individual in full or partial nudity or shows or depicts such individual in any sexual act or conduct, or is in the nature of impersonation in an electronic form, including artificially morphed images of such individual”, the content must be removed in 24 hours.
The February advisory mentioned three rules: rule 3(1)(b)(vi), rule 3(1)(c) and aforementioned rule 3(2)(b). Under rule 3(1)(b)(vi), all intermediaries, and not just social media platforms, are required to ensure that no user impersonates another person on their platform. Under rule 3(1)(c), all intermediaries are required to inform their users at least once a year of their policies, rules and regulations.
The February advisory also asked social media platforms to “put in place appropriate technology and processes for identifying information that may violate the provisions of rules and regulations or user agreement”.
A parliamentarian expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s response.
“Even if the tweet is taken down in 24 hours, the reputational damage is done in 10 minutes. The best thing is to do is to implement harm-related stringent penalties so that the perpetrators are deterred,” said Amar Patnaik, Rajya Sabha MP from the Biju Janata Dal, an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. “The government is not looking at it in a holistic manner. They are just focussing on taking it [the deepfake] down, and not focussing on the damage that is done.”
In this case, it is not known who uploaded the morphed video. “I had no involvement with the deepfake video, and I’m deeply disturbed and upset by what is happening,” Zara Patel, whose video was morphed and on whose body Mandanna’s head was spliced, wrote on Instagram.
In this case, it was not just Mandanna who has been subjected to online gender-based violence. Patel, too, was been robbed of her agency as she is reduced to just her body, experts said. “In most of these cases, as the content is amplified and goes viral, women are sexualised and thereby reduced to sexual objects leading to loss of bodily autonomy, privacy and bodily integrity,” Malavika Rajkumar, project associate at IT for Change, a non-profit, had said earlier. “The fact that this is getting widely shared is also a result of toxic masculinity and patriarchy that is rampant online.”
