Government May Give Flexibility On AI Labelling Norms Amid Industry Pushback
While the move is aimed at building trust in digital media, industry leaders say the rule, as drafted, risks sweeping up routine and harmless uses of artificial intelligence.
The government may not fully roll back its proposed rule mandating visible labels on AI-generated content but is likely to ease the 10% disclosure threshold to around 5–7%, according to government sources.
This comes as India’s creative and technology sectors have welcomed the government’s intent to curb deepfakes but raised alarms that its draft labelling mandate for AI-generated content could unintentionally disrupt legitimate production workflows.
Instead, the government may only reduce the mandate from 10% audio/video label to 5-7%. "Based on the consultations, we'll take a call. So far we're not looking at rolling back any changes, at best we can soften the mandate," a senior official said at the condition of anonymity.
"A blanket '10% of screen/time' disclosure, if applied to legitimate creative and post-production workflows, could make everyday industrial uses of AI unfeasible, from VFX clean-ups to dubbing and restoration," said Rajan Navani, Co-Chairman of CII’s National Committee on Media & Entertainment and Founder & CEO of JetSynthesys.
Navani urged a "risk-based framework" offering dual compliance paths, including machine-readable provenance and permanent metadata by default, and visible labels where there is risk of deception or identity harm. "We also urge carve-outs for B2B and non-deceptive use, alternative disclosures for long-form content, and a phased pilot to validate practicality before full roll-out," he said.
Policy experts echoed the need for clarity. Kazim Rizvi, Co-Founder of think-tank The Dialogue, said ambiguity around terms like "synthetically generated information" could make implementation nearly impossible. "How is a platform to ascertain whether textual content uploaded by a user is written by them or generated by a chatbot?" he asked, adding that broad definitions could make nearly all online content subject to labelling.
Responding to NDTV Profit on the industry feedback, MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan said the ministry will "await stakeholder views as part of the consultation and consider them before taking a final call." Public consultations are opened till November 6, and the amendments to the rule have been notified.
