New regulation to tackle deepfakes soon, says IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

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

The minister, who met social media platforms on the deepfake issue on Thursday, said that companies have agreed on the need for clear actionable work in areas such as detection, prevention, strengthening of reporting mechanism, and raising user awareness.

"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," Vaishnaw told reporters.

Deepfakes have emerged as a new threat to democracy, the minister said.

"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. 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.

Recently, 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.