Centre issues advisory to social media platforms over deepfakes after viral ‘Rashmika Mandanna’ video

As per government sources, the advisory has reiterated existing legal provisions that platforms have to follow as online intermediaries. It has mentioned Section 66D of the Information Technology Act, which entails punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resources with imprisonment up to three years and fine up to Rs 1 lakh.

The advisory is also understood to have mentioned Rule 3(2)(b) of the Information Technology Rules, under which social media platforms are required to take down content in the nature of impersonation, including artificially morphed images of an individual, within 24 hours of the receipt of a complaint.

A recent deepfake of Mandanna is currently viral on sites like Instagram, where her face has been morphed into a video where a woman can be seen entering a lift wearing revealing clothes. The original video belongs to a British-Indian social media influencer and had been uploaded to Instagram last month.

As the clip went viral, actor Amitabh Bachchan has called for legal action against the deepfake of Mandanna. Union Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said on X (formerly Twitter) that “deepfakes are the latest and even more dangerous and damaging form of misinformation and need to be dealt with by (online) platforms”.

Responding to the viral deepfake, Mandanna said on X that she was “really hurt” and that such videos are scary not only for her, “but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused”.

This particular clip highlights that the problems of deepfake technology are most certainly expected to be bigger for women, for whom online platforms are already a hostile place. Deepfakes add a new dimension to the ways in which they can be harassed on the internet.

In February, the IT ministry issued advisories to the chief compliance officers of various social media platforms after it received reports regarding the potential use of AI-generated deepfakes that were manipulating people by generating doctored content.

The Centre is also looking to invoke a controversial law that would require WhatsApp to share details about the first originator of a message on account of rising AI-led misinformation on the messaging platform, The Indian Express had earlier reported.

The basis for this is multiple deepfake videos of politicians circulating on WhatsApp, and the government is understood to be in the process of sending an order to the messaging company under the Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021, seeking the identity of the people who first shared the videos on the platform.