Major social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, have introduced new features that allow users to label content that has been generated or modified using artificial intelligence. This follows the draft amendments issued last month by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to the Information Technology Rules of 2021.
The proposed changes aim to curb the rising spread of AI driven deepfakes. They require all users to declare when content has been created or altered with AI and direct platforms to adopt technology to verify these disclosures.
According to information shared with a common publication, officials from the ministry stated that leading social media intermediaries are now working on internal systems to detect AI content that is uploaded without labels. The first phase of implementation focuses on platforms that have at least five million registered users in India. A review shows that YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have already introduced features that align with the directive.
YouTube now requires creators to disclose when content is meaningfully altered or synthetically generated. This includes videos that make a real person appear to say or do something they did not do, change visuals of real places or events or create realistic scenes that did not happen. In March 2024, YouTube added a tool in Creator Studio that requires disclosure for realistic content generated or edited using AI. At the time, creators did not need to label material that was clearly unrealistic, animated or made using AI for production assistance. Under the new rules, disclosures are required even for content that is partially altered using audio, video or image editing tools.
Meta has adopted a similar approach on Facebook and Instagram. The company now asks users to label digitally generated or altered photorealistic audio and visuals. It provided examples such as AI created songs, conversations between two individuals created using AI and reels narrated with AI voiceovers.
Google and Meta have not responded to questions on the matter. However, officials said these platform level changes still fall short of what the government has proposed. One official stated, “The platforms have so far asked users to label only AI content which looks realistic. The government has mandated that all AI content be labelled as such. That is a major difference.”
The draft amendments also propose that at least ten per cent of the visible display area of a post or the first ten per cent of an audio clip must contain a disclaimer. This metadata will remain permanently embedded so that the label cannot be removed or changed. While stakeholders have shared feedback on the requirement, the timeline for implementation has not yet been decided. The proposal builds on earlier changes to the Information Technology Rules in 2022 and 2023.
Industry executives noted that companies such as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, Amazon and Intel are part of the steering committee of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, which provides an open standard known as Content Credentials to track the origin and edits of digital content.
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