Govt holds technical talks with Meta over deepfakes, harmful AI content

The government held technical discussions with Meta over deepfakes, child sexual abuse material and unlabelled AI-generated content on its platforms. Meta explained its systems and proposed solutions, while officials sought specific measures and results to address harmful content and algorithmic concerns

New Delhi: The government on Friday held technical rounds of discussions with Meta, and the social media giant explained in detail how it would address the Centre’s concerns over deepfakes, child abuse content and unlabelled synthetically generated information circulating on platforms, sources said.

Sources said the government has asked the company to take specific steps and report back to it on the results. After two days of meetings that saw IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw questioning Meta’s team – led by global affairs head Joel Kaplan – on the content recommendation algorithms and the social media giant’s compliance with local laws, day three of discussions was technical.

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Meta explained how its systems work and outlined how it plans to address the government’s concerns over deepfakes, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and bot accounts.

The company told the government that it has solutions to tackle these issues and detailed how they could be deployed, government sources told PTI. Sources further said that one of the key issues discussed was the reappearance, continued circulation and virality of AI-generated harmful content even after it has been flagged.

The government questioned Meta on why AI-generated videos without labels continue to remain visible on its platforms despite the IT Rules requiring synthetic content to be identified and labelled, sources said.

On Thursday, Meta executives had faced the second straight day of questioning by Indian government officials over issues, including Instagram’s content recommendation algorithms and the social media giant’s compliance with local laws, and according to sources, the company had assured that it is working to tackle deepfakes, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and bot accounts.

Sources had earlier said that the company admitted there were “serious issues” and assured it will take continuous action to resolve them. The government will continue to press the company to undertake sustained measures, actions and improvements to address its various concerns.

Meta’s global team had met Vaishnaw and IT Secretary S Krishnan on Wednesday and Thursday following the government’s summons over the temporary restriction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Facebook post recently.