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India's New AI Law Aims to Shield News Publishers and Content Creators

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According to a report, the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has revealed that the government is contemplating a new legislation concerning artificial intelligence (AI), with the goal of protecting the rights of news publishers and content creators while simultaneously mitigating potential harm to users.

The proposed law, whether enacted as an independent legislation or integrated into the upcoming Digital India Bill set to replace the Information Technology Act of 2000, underscores the importance of acknowledging creativity in relation to intellectual property and financial consequences, as stressed by the minister.

Furthermore, he proposed that a legislative framework for regulation, rather than reliance on a self-regulatory entity, would prove more efficacious. This comes in response to international calls for safeguarding the rights of content creators amid a surge in legal actions against tech behemoths accused of utilizing copyrighted material without remuneration.

In India, demands from news publishers have intensified for amendments to IT regulations aimed at guaranteeing equitable remuneration for content utilized by AI systems. The Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), representing 17 leading media publishers in the nation, has advocated for safeguards against potential copyright infringements by AI models.

As per the latest government advisory, AI models deemed unreliable due to insufficient testing must be made accessible to the public only after being appropriately labeled based on their associated risks. Released in mid-March, the advisory asserts that such labeling should effectively communicate to users the potential fallibility or unreliability of the generated output.