‘A new threat to democracy’: Govt will come up with new regulations soon to tackle deepfakes, says IT Minister

The government will come up with new regulations soon to tackle deepfakes, said IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday, adding that deepfakes as a new threat to democracy.

Vaishnaw, who met social media platforms on the deepfake issue on Thursday, said that it has emerged as a new threat to democracy. “We will have our next meeting in the first week of December…that will be on follow-up action on today’s decisions, and also on what should be included in the draft regulation,” Vaishnaw said.

“Companies have agreed on the need for clear actionable work in areas such as detection, prevention, strengthening of reporting mechanism, and raising user awareness,” he said.

Addressing the media, he said, “We will start drafting regulation today itself, and within a short time we will have a new set of regulations for deepfakes … this could be in the form of amending existing framework or bringing new rules, or new law,”.

The move came after several ‘deepfake’ videos targeting leading actors went viral, sparking public outrage and raising concerns over the misuse of technology and tools for creating doctored content and fake narratives.

Deepfakes refer to synthetic or doctored media that is digitally manipulated and altered to convincingly misrepresent or impersonate someone, using a form of artificial intelligence.

With inputs from PTI.

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Chandan Prakash