In an advisory issued by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) last Friday, it was declared that any AI technology still in development must acquire explicit government permission before being released to the public.

Developers will also only be able to deploy these technologies after labelling the potential fallibility or unreliability of the output generated.

Furthermore, the document outlines plans for implementing a “consent popup” mechanism to inform users about potential defects or errors produced by AI. It also mandates the labelling of deepfakes with permanent unique metadata or other identifiers to prevent misuse.

In addition to these measures, the advisory orders all intermediaries or platforms to ensure that any AI model product – including large language models (LLM) – does not permit bias, discrimination, or threaten the integrity of the electoral process.

Some industry figures have criticised India’s plans as going too far: