NEW DELHI: India has tightened rules governing the use of artificial intelligence on social media to combat a flood of disinformation, but also prompting warnings of censorship and an erosion of digital freedoms. The new regulations are set to take effect on February 20 &mdash; the final day of an international AI summit in New Delhi featuring leading global tech figures &mdash; and will sharply reduce the time platforms have to remove content deemed problematic. With more than a billion internet users, India is grappling with AI-generated disinformation swamping social media. Companies such as Instagram, Facebook and X will have three hours, down from 36, to comply with government takedown orders, in a bid to stop damaging posts from spreading rapidly. Stricter regulation in the world&#39;s most populous country ups the pressure on social media giants facing growing public anxiety and regulatory scrutiny globally over the misuse of AI, including the spread of misinformation and sexualized imagery of children. But rights groups say tougher oversight of AI if applied too broadly risks eroding freedom of speech. India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already faced accusations from rights groups of curbs on freedom of expression targeting activists and opponents, which his government denies. The country has also slipped in global press freedom rankings during his tenure. The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital‑rights group, said the compressed timeframe of the social media take-down notices would force platforms to become &quot;rapid-fire censors.&quot; &#39;Automated censorship&#39; Last year, India&#39;s government launched an online portal called Sahyog &mdash;- meaning &quot;cooperate&quot; in Hindi &mdash; to automate the process of sending takedown notices to platforms including X and Facebook. The latest rules have been expanded to apply to content &quot; created, generated, modified or altered through any computer resource&quot; except material changed during routine or good‑faith editing. Platforms must now clearly and permanently label synthetic or AI‑manipulated media with markings that cannot be removed or suppressed. Under the new rules, problematic content could disappear almost immediately after a government notification. The timelines are &quot;so tight that meaningful human review becomes structurally impossible at scale,&rdquo; said IFF chief Apar Gupta. The system, he added, shifts control &quot;decisively away from users,&quot; with &quot;grievance processes and appeals operate on slower clocks,&quot; Gupta added. Most internet users were not informed of authorities&#39; orders to delete their content. &quot;It is automated censorship,&quot; digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa told AFP. The rules also require platforms to deploy automated tools to prevent the spread of illegal content, including forged documents and abusive material. &quot;Unique identifiers are un-enforceable,&quot; Pahwa added. &quot;It&#39;s impossible to do for infinite synthetic content being generated.&quot; Gupta likewise questioned the effectiveness of labels. &quot;Metadata is routinely stripped when content is edited, compressed, screen-recorded, or cross-posted,&quot; he said. &quot;Detection is error-prone.&quot; &#39;Online hate&#39; The US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), in a report with the IFF, warned the laws &quot;may encourage proactive monitoring of content which may lead to collateral censorship,&quot; with platforms likely to err on the side of caution. The regulations define synthetic data as information that &quot;appears to be real&quot; or is &quot;likely to be perceived as indistinguishable from a natural person or real-world event.&quot; Gupta said the changes shift responsibility &quot;upstream&quot; from users to the platforms themselves. &quot;Users must declare if content is synthetic, and platforms must verify and label before publication,&quot; said Gupta. But he warned that the parameters for takedown are broad and open to interpretation. &quot;Satire, parody, and political commentary using realistic synthetic media can get swept in, especially under risk-averse enforcement,&quot; Gupta said. At the same time, widespread access to AI tools has &quot;enabled a new wave of online hate &quot;facilitated by photorealistic images, videos, and caricatures that reinforce and reproduce harmful stereotypes,&quot; the CSOH report added. In the most recent headline-grabbing case, Elon Musk&#39;s AI chatbot Grok sparked outrage in January when it was used to make millions of sexualized images of women and children, by allowing users to alter online images of real people. &quot;The government had to act because platforms are not behaving responsibly,&quot; Pahwa said. &quot;But the rules are without thought.&quot;

India

Stricter regulation in the world's most populous country ups the pressure on social media giants facing growing public anxiety and regulatory scrutiny globally over the misuse of AI, including the spread of misinformation and imagery of children.

India's tougher AI social media rules spark censorship fears

NEW DELHI: Authorities in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are preparing the ground for a ban on children using social media, a minister said Thursday, as concerns mount globally over online addiction and abuse. Nara Lokesh, the southern state&#39;s information technology minister, said trust in social media was &quot;breaking down&quot; and warned that &quot;children are slipping into relentless usage.&quot; &quot;The government has decided to act,&quot; he said in a statement posted on X, adding that officials had ordered a study into legal tools for enforcing &quot;age-appropriate access.&quot; India, the world&#39;s most populous nation, has about one billion internet users with all cities and 95 percent of villages connected, according to government figures. Andhra Pradesh authorities have invited major platforms including Meta, Google, X and ShareChat to discuss and evaluate &quot;global best practices,&quot; Lokesh said. The move follows similar discussions in the western Indian state of Goa, where authorities were exploring the legality of a proposed social media ban for children. Lokesh also flagged concerns about the online safety of women, saying many were &quot;facing non-stop online abuse&quot;. &quot;This cannot be ignored,&quot; he added. The federal government weighed in on Thursday, with the annual economic survey recommending national guidelines on children&#39;s screen time. &quot;Policies on age-based access limits may be considered, as younger users are more vulnerable to compulsive use and harmful content,&quot; the survey said. Global scrutiny over social media use by minors has surged in recent months. Australia banned social media access for under‑16s in December, while French lawmakers this week approved a bill barring under‑15s from using the platforms. Several other countries as well as the European Union are considering similar steps.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Authorities in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are preparing the ground for a ban on children using social media, a minister said Thursday, as concerns mount globally over online addiction and abuse

Articles tagged with "Ban on social media"

India's tougher AI social media rules spark censorship fears

Indian state mulls social media ban for children