New Delhi: The India Government said that the most expected Digital India Act (DIA) will handle misinformation and ‘high-risk AI’ strictly to prevent user harm. Also, the first draft of the Bill will be released by the first week of June.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT in the second round of pre-drafting public consultations with various stakeholders said that as the threat of AI-related misinformation is growing, the government will build the required guardrails and a part of DIA will address “high-risk and deep fake AI”.
“We are not going to regulate AI but we will create guardrails. There will be no separate legislation but a part of DIA will address threats related to high-risk AI,” said the minister. The DIA will be an enabler for startup innovations in the country.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very clear that anything the government does should not cause difficulties for innovation in the startup space,” Chandrasekhar told the gathering. “We will be extremely sensitive to this. It is not in our intention at all to make things difficult for startups. DIA will be an enabler for startup innovations,” the minister added.
On misinformation, he said that the IT Rules cast this obligation (of determining misinformation) on platforms. “If there’s a need to define misinformation in the DIA, we will do so,” Chandrasekhar added.
For the second round of consultation, the government met policy experts and other stakeholders to draft the much awaited DIA which is expected in the next 2-3 months.
The first round of pre-drafting consultations of DIA were held in March.
For the first time, design, architecture and goals of a Bill are being discussed with stakeholders at its pre-introduction stage as part of the Digital India Dialogues. The proposed Bill aims to help India achieve the goal of becoming a trillion-dollar digital economy and be a significant trusted player in the Global Value Chains for digital products, devices, platforms and solutions.
