Government issued an AI advisory. What could be the reason?

On the very first day of March, an advisory to the Artificial Intelligence industry was issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The advisory stated that all the generative AI products would require to be made available with the Government of India’s explicit permission in case these generative AI products are unreliable or under testing.

The opinion of the government

The government is of the view that such an advisory actually puts forward a distinct approach to artificial intelligence research and policy that had been signaled earlier by the government. Earlier, the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar had given a sharp reaction to the Gemini chatbot of Google. This was because the Gemini chatbot of Google responded to a query, “Is Modi a fascist?” took a storm on the internet. According to the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, the response by the chatbot Gemini actually violated the IT laws of the county.

Is it a reminder or a mandate?

Many in the industry wonder if the advisory issued by the government is actually a reminder of the rules that already exist or if it is a strict mandate. The Legal Director of the Software Freedom Law Centre, Delhi is of the view that the advisor sounds like an order by the government. The document was actually sent to huge tech companies such as Google, demanding a report on the actions taken by the company within 15 days.

Mr. Chandrasekhar opined that there are legal consequences for the platforms that permit or generate illegal content, in accordance with the existing law. Such illegal content includes contents of defamation, false information, pornography, and more.

As of now, the government has not talked in detail about how IT laws can be applicable to automated AI systems in such a manner. A technology lawyer, Pranesh Prakash expressed that the advisory was actually “illegally unsound”.

The advisory by the government also mentioned that AI-generated images must be marked as such clearly. The industry has been uncertain about addressing such a matter consistently. Earlier, Amazon Web Services started this initiative by making use of an “invisible” watermark. However, the company feels that this might not prove to be as effective as required, given that it is quite easy to remove watermarks from images.

How does the government view the industry?

In the recent past, the government has expressed optimism towards artificial intelligence, especially in cases where the Big Tech companies have managed to strike a neat balance between artificial intelligence and the regular. Last year, the IT Ministry clearly expressed that the government is not thinking of bringing a regulation or law to regulate the development of artificial intelligence in India.