The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will examine whether Meta’s newly launched artificial intelligence tool, Muse, complies with India’s legal framework amid growing privacy concerns, Secretary S. Krishnan said on Thursday.
“The government will see if Muse is in accordance with the legal framework or not. We will examine the representations we receive on the matter,” Krishnan told reporters on the sidelines of the CII GCC Summit, referring to concerns around Muse following reports that the AI tool can access or use content from public Instagram accounts. Meta, on Tuesday rolled out Muse Image, its first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. It can interpret complex prompts, use photos as inputs and let users edit generated images directly through sketches or annotations.
Outstanding Regulatory Notices
Meanwhile, the IT ministry will decide on the future course of action on Meta’s public defence of its child safety record on Instagram, as well as the WhatsApp username issue, only after the company responds to the notices issued to it, Krishnan added.
WhatsApp has time until Thursday to respond over its username feature whereas Instagram still has time to respond to a separate notice on proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Meta had later secured three more days to respond to the notice over WhatsApp’s username feature rollout which had raised concerns on cyber fraud related issues, igniting a row over product pre-approval and digital surveillance, as reported by Fe earlier.
MeitY, on July 2, had summoned Meta over allegations that advertisements promoting CSAM appeared on Instagram, even as it continued to press the social media giant over WhatsApp’s proposed username feature that it fears could fuel cyber fraud. Subsequently, a formal notice was sent to the company.
Meta had recently put out a blog post defending its practices, calling CSAM as a horrific crime and pledging continued investment in technology and resources to combat it.
Assessing AI Impact
Krishnan also said that the government will assess whether recent labour and tax reforms have added momentum to setting up global capability centres (GCCs), and if not, is artificial intelligence the underlying reason.
GCCs contributes to almost 2 percent of India’s GDP, while IT and IT-enabled services remain the single largest export sector at around $250 billion.
“We need to make sure that AI is deployed by a set of companies that we have come to know as GCC. It needs to be deployed in a manner that is meaningful and India’s inherent strength with regards to its human resources and cost advantages are effectively utilised,” he said.