Government advises platforms to comply with IT rules, requests submission of Action Taken Report to the Ministry within 15 days

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has once again issued an advisory to social media firms to comply with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.  This advisory is in continuation of the one issued on December 23, 2023. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has observed that intermediaries or platforms are not fulfilling their due-diligence obligations outlined in the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 ('IT Rules').

With this new advisory, the government reiterates that non-compliance to the provisions of the IT Act and/or IT Rules would result in potential penal consequences to the intermediaries or platforms or its users when identified, including but not limited to prosecution under the IT Act and several other statues of the criminal code. Meity has also requested intermediaries to ensure compliance with immediate effect and to submit an Action Taken-cum-Status Report to the Ministry within 15 days of this advisory.

With the new advisory, the government has once again advised 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 as outlined in Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules or violate any other provision of the IT Act. Additionally, platforms should ensure that their computer resource do not permit any bias or discrimination or threaten the integrity of the electoral process including via the use of Artificial Intelligence model(s) /LLM/Generative AI, software(s) or algorithm(s).

The government has also advised the use of unreliable Artificial Intelligence model(s) and its availability to the users on the Indian Internet must be done so with the explicit permission of the Government of India and be deployed only after appropriately labelling the possible and inherent fallibility or unreliability of the output generated.