Google Gemini Row: MeitY’s New Advisory Mandates Prior Approval For AI Products Before Launch

Days after a row erupted over Google’s AI chatbot Gemini’s answers to a question about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the centre has now issued an advisory that mandates digital platforms to seek prior approval before launching any AI product in India. 

Sent to digital intermediaries on March 1, the advisory, directs platforms to label under-trial AI models and ensure that no unlawful content is hosted on their sites. 

The Ministry of electronics and information technology’s (MeitY) advisory also warns of penal consequences for non-compliance with the directive.

“All intermediaries or platforms to ensure that use of Artificial Intelligence model(s) /LLM/Generative AI, software(s) or algorithm(s) on or through its computer resource does not permit its users to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any unlawful content,” the advisory noted.

This is the second advisory issued by the Ministry in recent months and is a continuation of the first one, which directed social media platforms to crack the whip on AI-powered misinformation and fake news. 

Speaking to ANI, Minister of State (MoS) for electronics and information technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, also confirmed the development and said that the new advisory obligates all digital platforms to be “very careful” about deploying under-trial AI models on the Indian internet. 

“… By saying that the platform is under testing or unreliable does not absolve them (digital platforms) from the consequences of the law, especially the criminal law. So, we have advised them that any such platform must have labels that it is under testing. Most importantly, it must inform the consumer through a consent mechanism that this platform may output erroneous and unreliable information,” added Chandrasekhar.

Training guns at the recent Google Gemini fiasco, he said that the platform was “clearly in violation of the law” by outputting “unlawful content”, referring to responses about PM Modi. 

He also added that the advisory will help platforms take a more disciplined approach towards launching their AI models and platforms in the market. We do not want platforms to deploy their products on the internet without sufficient guardrails, information and disclaimers in place, he added. 

Meanwhile, the move has not gone down well with critics. Medianama’s Nikhil Pahwa, in a post on X, said that MeitY should clarify the legal basis for the advisory as the IT Rules and the IT Act do not empower the centre to issue such directives.

“I’m sure someone as knowledgeable about tech as @Rajeev_GoI knows this, AI model outputs are a function of input data,… and context: so how can a bot be liable or even in any way responsible for the output?… Most of these rules are illegal. MeitY is acting this way because platforms did not take the government to court for these illegal rules,” said Pahwa.

The advisory comes in the backdrop of Chandrasekhar recently saying that draft laws to regulate the AI space would be issued by June or July this year. 

As GenAI sees massive adoption across India, multiple issues have cropped up with the emerging technology in the recent past including deepfakes of celebs, cricketers and other personalities. 

With general elections just round the corner, the centre is also wary of the usage of AI for spreading fake news and misinformation. 

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