AI advisory not applicable to startups? Minister clarifies after ‘bad move’ row

On social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the minister said, "Recent advisory of @GoI_MeitY needs to be understood.

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the government advisory which directed AI platforms to seek permission before launching an AI product does not apply to startups. On social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the minister said, "Recent advisory of @GoI_MeitY needs to be understood. Advisory is aimed at the Significant platforms and permission seeking from Meity is only for large platforms and will not apply to startups."

Union minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

"Process of seeking permission , labelling & consent based disclosure to user abt untested platforms is insurance policy to platforms who can otherwise be sued by consumers. Safety & Trust of Indias Internet is a shared and common goal for Govt, users and Platforms (sic)," he continued.

This comes after government issued an advisory following Google's Gemini controversy to platforms that push AI-generated content stating that it should be labelled or embedded with an identifier to determine the creator of any misinformation. Platforms will also need to submit an action taken-cum-status report to the ministry within 15 days, it added.

Responding to the advisory, Perplexity AI's CEO Aravind Srinivas said that it is a “bad move” while Abacus AI's CEO Bindu Reddy said, "If you know the Indian government, you know this will a huge drag! All forms will need to completed in triplicate and there will be a dozen hoops to jump through! This is how monopolies thrive, countries decay and consumers suffer!"

Kissan AI's Pratik Desai reflected, “I was such a fool thinking I will work bringing GenAI to Indian Agriculture from SF. We were training multimodal low cost pest and disease model, and so excited about it. This is terrible and demotivating after working 4yrs full time brining AI to this domain in India.”