On March 12, 2024, OneTrust DataGuidance Research confirmed with Shobhit Chandra and Harsh Walia from Khaitan & Co. that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued an advisory on artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, Shobhit and Harsh noted that the advisory is not yet available on the MeitY's website and highlighted that:

• ''in a nutshell, it appears that the advisory calls upon industry players to reinforce mechanisms to ensure that no illegal or wrongful content is displayed/hosted on the platform, and promptly detect and address any instances that are likely to culminate in bias, discrimination, or threat to the electoral process through the use of AI tools. There is also a requirement to obtain the Government's explicit approval before providing any under-testing or unreliable AI tools to users in India, affix appropriate labels regarding the possible and inherent fallibility or unreliability of the output generated through such tools, and use 'consent pop-ups' for this purpose. In particular, platforms that aid synthetic creation/generation/modification of information that can potentially be used as 'misinformation' or 'deepfake,' should label such information or embed it with a permanent unique metadata or identifier, to facilitate traceability of the first originator of such information. Entities are required to file an action taken report in this regard within 15 days of the advisory;
• in the absence of a dedicated framework to regulate AI at present, the advisory provides an insight into what the regulatory framework may look like in the future. It is clear that the emphasis of the Government is to build a degree of reliability and accountability when it comes to the offering of various AI tools in the longer run, while the immediate focal point is to prevent bias and discrimination in the upcoming electoral process in India. The requirements, on the face of it, appear to be rather broad brush and challenging to comply with. As a solace, the Minister of State has clarified before the press that the advisory is primarily focused on 'significant platforms' and that start-ups should not worry about it too much. However, nothing formal to this effect has been issued thus far and ambiguity still looms around which platforms would be covered; and
• it will be interesting to see how industry players imbibe the requirements of the advisory in the coming days, and if the Government will aim to demystify the key pain points regarding the legal basis, applicability, and consequences for non-compliance with the advisory. With the Digital India Act slated to be released in the latter part of the year, the possibility of further reinforcement of these requirements cannot be ruled out.''

Please note that the above comments are based on the personal views of the authors and not of the firm as a whole.