Overview
- MeitY has notified amendments to the IT Rules that take effect on February 20, cutting response times for government- and court-issued takedown orders to roughly two to three hours.
- Platforms with more than five million users must obtain user declarations for AI-generated posts and conduct technical verification before publishing such content.
- All synthetically generated material must carry prominent labels and platforms are expected to deploy detection and provenance tools, with references to C2PA-style approaches without endorsing a single standard.
- An earlier draft’s 10% screen-area label mandate was dropped in favor of a less prescriptive prominence test, and exemptions cover routine smartphone photo retouching and film special effects.
- Analysts say the tighter timelines and broader duties, including action based on user complaints and proactive monitoring, dilute safe-harbour protections and are likely to drive rapid, automated takedowns of lawful speech.