Industry welcomes govt’s move to amend GenAI advisory

The amended advisory was issued on 15 March, which also removed the requirement of compliance within 15 days. “It is good to see that the industry’s feedback was taken and the AI advisory was revised. The earlier advisory would have severely reduced speed to market and dented the innovation ecosystem,” said Rohit Kumar, founding partner at The Quantum Hub, a public policy consulting firm.

He noted that the requirement to submit an action-taken-report in the earlier letter also meant that it was not merely an ‘advisory’.

Platforms and intermediaries equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) capabilities, such as Google and OpenAI, were told to obtain government approval before offering users services that enable the creation of deepfakes, the earlier advisory issued by the ministry of information technology and electronics had said.

The platforms were also mandated to label themselves as ‘under testing’ and were also asked to secure explicit consent from users, making them aware of the potential errors inherent in the technology. All platforms and intermediaries that utilize large language models (LLMs) and foundational models were to comply. These requirements continue to be part of the amended advisory.

Additionally, the services were required to not produce content that compromises the integrity of the electoral process or violates Indian law, highlighting concerns over misinformation and deepfakes influencing election outcomes.

Some executives said that elections were a high-risk period and so asking intermediaries to be extra careful before releasing untested models and appropriately labelling outputs was the right step taken by the government.

“While the revision is definitely a positive step, the whole episode highlights the need for procedural safeguards – to avoid quick reactions to incidents and instead adopt a more consultative approach to policymaking,” an executive, who did not wish to be identified, said.

The original advisory followed a few controversies, including an instance where Google’s AI platform Gemini came under fire for answers generated by the platform on a question about Prime Minister Modi. Instances of ‘hallucinations’ by GenAI models have also been observed, with Ola’s beta GenAI platform Krutrim.

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Published: 17 Mar 2024, 06:53 PM IST

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz