The rules to implement the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, was released last week for stakeholder consultation. However, the government is not expected to bring the draft Digital India Act and regulatory framework around AI in a hurry. S Krishnan, secretary, ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY), in an interview with Jatin Grover, said the existing legal framework to handle AI and intermediaries regulations is satisfactory at the moment. Excerpts:
What will be MeitY’s focus in 2025?
The year 2024 has been satisfactory for the ministry. We approved four projects under the semiconductor mission. We launched the AI mission. Significant progress on the components scheme has been made, which will be the early harvest for 2025. We are looking at one or two more schemes in the new India Semiconductor Mission. Besides, full grounding for IT Hardware PLI and the AI mission need to happen. We are looking to put out new guidelines for research and development to make sure that the new technologies that are developed in labs are actually getting into use and we are able to handle that interface better. We will be seeing more work in internet governance, internet resilience and cybersecurity space this year.
Do you think key areas such as AI regulations, new intermediary frameworks, etc will take more time?
We need to be clear that these are all things around which there should be a broad-based consensus. Further, there’s no urgency as the existing legal framework to handle such things is satisfactory at the moment. One has to look at all the risks and the instruments we have to counter those risks. For example – for personal data protection, there is a DPDP Act, for copyright issues with AI models, though the matter is subjudice, but there is a copyright law. Then the next major risk is misrepresentation and deepfakes. Deepfakes are misrepresentations and this misrepresentation is covered in the existing law. Only the quality of the misrepresentation is significantly higher than before so we have to have mechanisms by which we can detect it earlier. That can be done through labelling. We may need some legal changes in order to force intermediaries to take it down earlier. Currently, the compliance is quite good.
If the present legal framework is satisfactory, then is there a need for a Digital India Act?
It’s not something that we are ruling out completely. We are open to bringing amendments to the IT Act if there is an urgent requirement. There are some things such as categorisation of intermediaries, that should be ideally done through legislation and not rules. But that is not a priority at the moment.
What about regulations relating to AI?
We need to allow some maturity to come into the market so that the industry doesn’t get spooked that the government is stepping in and doing all kinds of things. It has to be need based. We are currently working on a voluntary code of conduct through the AI Safety Institute.
In the AI mission, how will the dataset platform be built?
The work is going on internally within the government. We are doing it in a low profile manner as there are some sensitivities which we have to handle when data is involved. We are consulting ministries on building open data repositories.
There’s a debate whether India should build its own foundational models or not. What is the government’s view?
We are getting varying inputs from the experts. We are trying to see what would be the best thing to do as far as India is concerned. One area which we are looking at is building small language models, but we are also evaluating the need to build complete language-based models specific to India.
On electronics manufacturing, how is the government going about achieving the $500 billion target by 2030?
We have been doing extensive industry consultations on the same. We will have many enabling pieces to achieve that.
In the first leg of the semiconductor incentive scheme, do we have scope for funding more projects?
We are examining if small projects related to OSATs, compound semiconductors can be accommodated.
Chip design scheme has not seen progress on the lines the government had expected. Any changes expected in the same?
We are trying to make some changes to the scheme in order to make it more attractive and easier for startups to use. We are also expanding the eligibility criteria.
How is the IT Hardware 2.0 scheme taking shape?
We should be seeing the claims in the final quarter of this fiscal year for whatever production which has taken place during 2024-25. Some major players are coming on board in 2025-26. Whatever the industry wanted, it has been done. So now it is up to the industry to come back and deliver.
Laptop import management system has been extended by another year. What is the rationale for that?
We are keeping an eye on the imports right now. It is just to give us an idea of whether they are moving along expected lines or not. Because our expectation is that as the PLI 2.0 kicks in, we will actually have a situation where imports will start dropping because there will be more domestic production.
