Parliament Panel Calls for Licensing, Labels and Tougher Laws on AI Misinformation

Parliamentary Panel Seeks Legal and Tech Fixes for AI-Generated Fake News: What Legal Teams Need to Prepare For

India's Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology has urged the government to move on licensing requirements and mandatory labelling of AI-generated content. The committee, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, also called for tight coordination between the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and other departments.

While the recommendations are not binding, they often inform policy. Expect draft rules to surface in the next parliamentary session.

Key proposals at a glance

• Explore licensing norms for AI content creators.
• Mandate labelling of AI-generated videos and other content.
• Inter-ministerial coordination for legal and technological enforcement.
• Amend penal provisions, raise fines, and fix accountability for dissemination of fake news.
• Require fact-checking mechanisms and an internal ombudsman in print, digital, and electronic media organisations, built through stakeholder consensus.

Technology posture the panel endorses

AI can flag suspect content, but it should not be the final arbiter of truth. The committee notes AI is both a detection tool and a source of misinformation, and recommends human review as a second layer.

MeitY has set up a nine-member group on deepfakes and is backing projects on fake speech detection and deepfake image/video detection.

Why this matters for legal teams

Licensing and labelling obligations will create new compliance burdens for platforms, media houses, creators, and AI vendors. Definitions will matter: who is an "AI content creator," and when does a transformation trigger labelling?

Expect overlap with intermediary due diligence duties under the IT framework and potential interaction with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 for face/voice data used in detection and review workflows.

Any regime will need to balance Article 19(1)(a) with reasonable restrictions under 19(2). Overbroad licensing or vague labelling rules risk constitutional challenges on proportionality and vagueness.

Immediate actions for in-house counsel and law firms

• Map AI touchpoints: creation, editing, moderation, distribution, and ad ops. Identify where AI generates or materially alters content.
• Prepare labelling workflows: implement content provenance logs, watermarking or cryptographic signatures (e.g., C2PA), and audit trails.
• Update policies: acceptable use, disclosures for synthetic media, takedown and appeals, and an escalation path for flagged content.
• Contracts: add clauses on AI provenance, labelling support, indemnities for deepfake misuse, and cooperation with lawful requests.
• Governance: stand up or designate an internal ombudsman; define fact-checking SOPs; document reviewer qualifications and SLAs.
• Data protection: ensure lawful basis for processing biometric identifiers used in detection; set retention and deletion schedules.
• Litigation readiness: preserve logs, model outputs, and reviewer notes to establish due diligence and mens rea defenses.

Open issues to watch

• Scope: Will licensing apply to individuals, platforms, model providers, or all three?
• Labelling standards: Text-only, audio, image, video-what thresholds trigger disclosure?
• Accountability chain: Creator, editor, publisher, platform-how liability is apportioned.
• Procedural safeguards: Notice, appeal, and transparency for enforcement actions.
• Extraterritoriality: Cross-border creators and hosting; cooperation mechanisms.

Operational tips for media and platforms

• Stand up a two-tier review: AI triage for risk signals, followed by human verification.
• Log every decision: source URLs, model version, risk score, reviewer ID, final disposition.
• Run red-team tests on your detection stack to calibrate false positives and negatives.
• Provide a clear disclosure label for synthetic media that is machine-readable and visible to users.

Policy context and resources

For ongoing updates and government advisories, monitor MeitY and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

• Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
• Ministry of Information and Broadcasting

Upskilling for AI risk and compliance

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Explore AI courses by job role to align legal, compliance, and product teams on shared standards.

Bottom line: the direction is clear-disclosure, provenance, accountability. Legal teams that build the workflows now will be ready when the rules drop.