The central government is preparing to bring a new law to curb the misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in social media and cyber sector. The government believes that the existing law is not capable of preventing misuse of AI and a new law is necessary for this.
According to S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Technology (IT), the existing laws are capable of dealing with deepfakes and labeling, but many new challenges are emerging. Among these, AI has a primary role for which a new law is being considered. According to the IT Secretary, the idea of making a new law to regulate AI started because the existing law is not capable of dealing with the new challenges coming up every day. At present discussions are going on with experts on this matter.
New law necessary to deal with AI
According to Sandeep Budki, an expert and expert on AI matters, a new law is necessary to deal with AI. If there is a delay in this then people in India will have to face problems at various levels. According to Budki, the current legal framework is proving to be incomplete because traditional laws were made keeping in mind human behavior and not autonomous machines i.e. AI. He said that precise law is necessary on many aspects.
Accountability and Responsibility
‘Black box’ problem- It is difficult even for coders to understand how AI algorithms reach a decision. In such a situation, who will be responsible in case of an accident, the AI developer, the user or the AI itself. This is not clear or fixed in the law.
autonomous decision- Existing criminal laws (such as the Indian Judicial Code) cannot ‘punish’ a machine if an AI-powered medical robot performs a botched surgery or causes a self-driving car accident.
Intellectual property rights and copyright
mechanical creator- Copyright laws around the world recognize only human creators. The law is silent on who will own a painting, music or code created autonomously by AI.
Data theft- Crores of copyrighted materials (articles, photos) are being scraped from the internet without permission to train AI models. Existing laws do not clearly differentiate between fair use and infringement.
Legal and court fraud
Fake legal reference- Recently, examples were presented in courts by lawyers of legal decisions prepared with AI (such as ChatGPT) that never actually happened.
Stand of Judiciary- The Supreme Court of India has taken a tough stance, saying that using AI-generated fake decisions without verification would amount to professional misconduct and AI can only be used for assistance, not for decision making.
Deepfakes and misinformation
Identity theft- It has become very easy with AI to create deepfake videos that commit financial fraud or tarnish the image by cloning a person’s voice or face.
Slow legal process – AI Act and defamation laws exist, but deepfakes spread so fast that by the time legal action is initiated, social or political damage has already been done.
Algorithmic Bias and Discrimination– AI models learn on old data, which may contain racial, gender or social biases. When banks use AI screening tools for lending or companies use them for hiring, AI discriminates in hidden ways. Traditional human rights and equality laws are unable to capture this digital discrimination.
Privacy and mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is being done by governments and private companies through facial recognition technology.
India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DAP) Act 2023 protects personal data, but it does not fully regulate the conclusions drawn by AI from processing data and AI profiling.
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