The Indian government has issued an advisory to social media firms, including X, Instagram and Facebook, calling all these giants to remove morphed images within 24 hours, said an official source on Tuesday (Nov 7).
"IT Intermediary Rules: Rule 3(1)(b)(vii): Social media intermediary shall observe due diligence including ensuring the rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement of the intermediary inform users not to host any content that impersonates another person," sources said.
"Rule 3(2)(b): Intermediary shall, within 24 hours from the receipt of a complaint in relation to any content ... in the nature of impersonation in an electronic form, including artificially morphed images of such individuals, take all .. measures to remove or disable access to such content," it added.
The sources said that the advisory issued to social media companies reiterated the existing rules including 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000: Punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resources: imprisonment of up to 3 years and a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh.
The advisory states that the social media giants should take necessary steps to remove content from their respective platforms which in any way depicts impersonation of any kind or artificially morphed images of people, within 24 hours from the receipt of a complaint.
It further mentioned that the social media giants should observe due diligence, make sure the rules and regulations are followed, and that users are warned against hosting any content that impersonates another person on their respective handles.
"MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) will act after social media companies fail to act as per the rule," the source said.
This came after a deep fake video of actress Rashmika Mandanna surfaced online and went viral.
Reacting to the video, the actor shared a note on Monday which read, "I feel hurt to share this and have to talk about the deep fake video of me being spread online. Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused."
"Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends and well-wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can't imagine how could I ever tackle this. We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft."
Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday (Nov 6) reacting to the actress' video said that social media firms are bound to remove any misinformation.
He said that if the platforms fail to comply with IT rules notified in April 2023, Rule 7 will apply and platforms can be taken to court by aggrieved users under provisions of IPC.
"Deepfakes are the latest and even more dangerous and damaging form of misinformation and need to be dealt with by platforms," the minister had said.
(With inputs from agencies)