War Against Deepfakes: Centre Tells Google, Meta To Pull Up Socks Or Lose Safe Harbour Immunity

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics & IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday (November 18) said that the Centre is planning to summon major social media platforms to discuss ways to combat the rising threat of deepfakes.

A deepfake is an image, a video or an audio recording that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else.

Responding to a question, the minister confirmed that Meta and Google would be directed to attend the meeting.

“They are taking steps…but we think that many more steps will have to be taken. And we are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platforms…Maybe in the next three to four days, we’ll call them for brainstorming on that and make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing it (deepfakes), and cleaning up their system,” Vaishnaw said.

As per the report, Vaishnaw also warned the platforms that they could lose safe harbour immunity if adequate steps were not taken to remove deepfakes. 

Section 79 of the IT Act provides social media platforms the status of intermediaries. This offers them exemptions and certain immunity from liabilities for any third-party content. As such, they cannot be held legally liable for any data or information posted by a user hosted on the platform.

The comment from Vaishnaw comes just a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi dubbed deepfakes problematic and urged the media to educate people about the issue. 

Earlier, Minister of State (MoS) for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar also called deepfakes a ‘major violation of law’. He had also put the onus on social media platforms saying that they were legally obligated to take down such content within 36 hours.

Deepfakes hit national headlines after a synthetic video went viral online that allegedly featured actress Rashmika Mandanna. The aftermath saw politicians, celebs and civil society members flag concerns around deepfakes. 

The issue also put the spotlight on the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) which has sped up the trend and has made it easy for amateurs to create deepfakes from the confines of their homes. 

Meanwhile, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has also taken suo moto cognisance of media reports on the deepfake controversy and has even sought a copy of the FIR registered in the matter. 

In turn, Delhi Police has commenced a probe into the matter and has even sought details from Meta on the URL from which the deepfake video of Mandanna originated. It has also directed the social media giant to share information on the users who allegedly shared the fake video online.