A day after a deepfake of actor Rashmika Mandanna went viral on social media, the Centre on Tuesday issued an advisory to online intermediaries to ensure that due diligence is exercised and reasonable efforts are made to identify misinformation and deepfakes, particularly those violating provisions of rules and regulations or user agreements.
The advisory also asked them to ensure that such cases are expeditiously acted upon well within the timeframes stipulated under the IT Rules 2021.
”Users are caused not to host such information/content/Deep Fakes and remove any such content when reported within 36 hours of such reporting and ensure expeditious action, well within the timeframes stipulated under the IT Rules 2021, and disable access to the content /information,” a press note said.
The intermediaries were reminded that any failure to act as per the relevant provisions of the IT Act and Rules would attract Rule 7 of the IT Rules, 2021 and could render the organisation liable to losing the protection available under Section 79(1) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, “Safety and trust of our ‘digital nagriks’ is our unwavering commitment and top priority for the Narendra Modi government. Given the significant challenges posed by misinformation and deepfakes, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has issued a second advisory within the last six months, calling upon online platforms to take decisive actions against the spread of deepfakes.”
He said deepfakes are a major violation and harm women in particular. ”Our government takes the responsibility of safety and trust of all nagriks very seriously, and more so about our children and women who are targeted by such content,” he added.
Deepfakes are synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that of another.