Government of India’s new advisory mandate withdraws approval for new AI products

In a fresh advisory issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the requirement of seeking government approval before launching artificial intelligence (AI) products to the public has been withdrawn.

The IT ministry said that the advisory issued on March 15, under the IT Act 2000 and IT Rules 2021, supersedes the March 1 advisory where it had directed platforms to take "explicit permission" of the Centre before deploying "under-testing/unreliable" AI models, etc. As per the fresh advisory, it does not contain any such provision.

"The advisory is issued in suppression of advisory.. dated March 1, 2024," it read.       

But the advisory issued on March 15 mentions that under-tested or unreliable AI products should be labelled with a disclaimer indicating that outputs generated by such products may be unreliable.

"Under-tested/unreliable Artificial Intelligence foundational model(s)/ LLM/Generative Al, software(s) or algorithm(s) or further development on such models should be made available to users in India only after appropriately labeling the possible inherent fallibility or unreliability of the output generated," the advisory accessed by a news source said.   

The advisory also highlighted, "Further, "consent popup" or equivalent mechanisms may be used to explicitly inform the users about the possible inherent fallibility or unreliability of the output generated."

The advisory that was issued on March 1 was very controversial and it attracted criticisms from the startup founders. It was described as a "bad move" and "demotivating."

The outcry prompted minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar to clarify the direction would not apply to startups and was restricted to significant platforms.

Later, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had also clarified that the task of testing AI models before launching for the public, will not apply for those working in the healthcare, agriculture and similar sectors.