Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday said a new set of regulations will be designed soon to deal with the ill use of deepfake technology.

The Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology made the statement after he convened a meeting with representatives from academia, industry bodies and social media companies on issues arising out of deepfake.

Addressing a press conference, he said, “Today, we had a very long and candid discussion (on deepfake). All the companies, platforms and the entire industry shared concern. They understood that this is not free speech and this is very harmful for society. They understood the need for much heavier regulation on this.”

Highlighting the outcome of the meeting, the minister said it was agreed during the discussion that the government, academia, social media companies and NASSCOM will jointly work towards responding to deepfake. It was also agreed that within the next 10 days, actionable items based on four pillars would be identified.

“We have all agreed that within the next 10 days , we will come up with clear actionable items on four pillars in a very structured way. The first pillar is detection, second is prevention, third is strengthening the reporting mechanism, and the fourth is awareness. We have agreed that we will start drafting the regulation and within a very short time frame, we will have a new set of regulations for deepfake,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in a statement said, “deepfake has emerged as a serious threat to democracy and social institutions across the world”.

It said from time to time, it has advised social media intermediaries to exercise due diligence and take expeditious action against deepfake.

Referring to the meeting chaired by Vaishnaw with the stakeholders, it said, “A follow-up meeting with relevant stakeholders will be held again in the first week of December to finalize the four-pillared structure.”

The Government of India is committed to combat the growing threat of deepfake by leveraging technology and fostering public awareness, it added.

Notably, the development came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) to create deepfake.

Besides Modi, Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan also expressed concern over a deepfake of his “Goodbye” co-star Rashmika Mandanna and demanded legal action.