On October 22, 2025, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (“MeitY”) released draft rules (“Draft Rules”) that seek to amend the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“Intermediary Rules”), for public consultation. By way of background, the Intermediary Rules prescribe among others, due diligence measures that intermediaries (as defined below) must implement to avail safe harbour from liability for third party owned content.

The Draft Rules primarily seek to govern the misuse of ‘synthetically generated information’ to spread misinformation, deepfakes, and other unlawful content. It defines synthetically generated information (“Synthetic Media”) as information that is artificially or algorithmically created, generated, modified, or altered using a computer resource (i.e., a computer system, computer network, database, or software), in a manner that such information reasonably appears to be authentic or true.

Applicability of the Draft Rules

The Draft Rules apply to intermediaries including significant social media intermediaries (“SSMIs”). An intermediary is defined under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act”) to mean an entity that ‘on behalf of a third party’, receives, stores, or transmits data or content or provides any service with respect to such data or content. Examples of intermediaries include web-hosting service providers, online marketplaces, search engines, and telecom service providers.

An SSMI is a social media intermediary (an intermediary that enables online interaction between two or more users and enables them to create, upload, disseminate, modify, or access, content),  having more than 5 million registered users in India.  SSMIs in India possibly include platforms such as Meta, Youtube, and X (formerly Twitter).

Key obligations under the Draft Rules

The Draft Rules require intermediaries offering a computer resource that enables or facilitates the generation or modification of Synthetic Media,  to ensure that such Synthetic Media is prominently labelled or embedded with a permanent unique metadata / identifier (“Permanent Unique Identifier”). Such Permanent Unique Identifier must: (i) enable immediate identification of Synthetic Media; and (ii) be visibly displayed or made audible in a prominent manner on such Synthetic Media such that it covers at least: (a) 10% of its surface area (in case of visual media), or (b) the initial ten percent (10%) of its duration (in case of audio content). An intermediary is also obligated to ensure that it does not enable the modification, suppression, or removal of the Permanent Unique Identifier.

Additional obligations for SSMIs

In addition, an SSMI that enables displaying, uploading, or publishing ‘any information’ on its computer resource, must: (i) require its users to declare whether such information is Synthetic Media; (ii) deploy appropriate technical measures including automated tools to verify the accuracy of such declaration; and (iii) where such declaration or technical verification confirms that the information is synthetical generated, ensure that it is prominently displayed with an appropriate label or notice indicating that it is Synthetic Media.

Way Forward

Once finalized and notified as law, the Draft Rules could possibly constitute India’s first substantive law governing Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated content. The MeitY has invited feedback on the Draft Rules until November 6, 2025.

In parallel with initiating technical measures to achieve compliance with the Draft Rules, stakeholders may wish to use this consultation window to raise concerns or propose refinements to the Draft Rules.  For instance, the applicability of the Draft Rules to AI based content generating platforms remains unclear.  An AI-based chatbot that self-generates content based on user prompts may not qualify as an ‘intermediary’ since it generates content on its own rather than receiving, storing, or hosting content ‘on behalf of’ third parties or providing services in relation to such content. Further, the IT Act clarifies that an ‘originator’ of content does not constitute an intermediary, which could further complicate the treatment of such services under the Draft Rules.