New Delhi, July 3: After the issue of Username on WhatsApp, US tech giant Meta seems to be in the crosshairs of the government of India in context of Instagram too.
Union Information Technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has flagged advertisements on Instagram which allegedly promote child sexual abuse material and has directed officials to summon the company over the matter.
The IT ministry is seeking an explanation from Meta, the owner of Instagram, on the issue.
This comes close on the heels of the IT Ministry stopping Meta from rolling out Username feature on WhatsApp in India.
Two days back, the government issued a notice to Meta, questioning the company’s planned rollout of its username feature wherein a user can hide his mobile number.
In response, representatives from the company met with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) officials who conveyed the government’s concerns regarding the feature and gave the company three days to furnish a detailed explanation.
Meta says the new feature is aimed at privacy of users, while the government feels it carries risks of cyber and other frauds.
The IT Ministry directed WhatsApp to pause the feature until consultations on the issue are completed “to the satisfaction of the Government”.
Meanwhile, IT Secretary S Krishnan today told reporters that the ministry is looking at a dedicated regulatory framework for Artificial Intelligence (AI).
He added that while existing legal provisions have served to address initial concerns on deepfakes and AI-generated synthetic content, an “additional regulation or law may be needed”.
“It is a conversation which has commenced, and my Minister (Vaishnaw) and I have both been on record earlier that we will look at AI regulation when the time is right, and it appears that the time is getting right, and we will start looking at it.
“We have used the IT rules and other provisions of existing law to address various concerns that AI raises, but now, probably the time has come to look at a separate legislation,” Krishnan said.
The secretary did not have a timeline for the final legislation. (BVI)
