Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Monday that the government’s advisory on large language models will not apply to startups and only to “significant platforms” . He was reacting to an Economic Times story published Monday on how start-ups are concerned about the government’s missive to get permission before launching new AI models.
Chandrashekhar on microblogging site X 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.”
Several AI startups had raised concerns over the government advisory arguing that it is anti-innovation and not forward looking.
The minister said that the advisory is aimed at untested AI platforms from deploying on the Indian Internet. The process of seeking permission, labelling and consent-based disclosure to users about untested platforms is “an insurance policy” to platforms who can otherwise be sued by consumers, he said.
The government’s advisory on March 1 said, “All intermediaries or platforms to ensure that use of Artificial Intelligence model(s) /LLM/Generative AI, software(s) or algorithm(s) on or through its computer resource does not permit its users to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any unlawful content as outlined in the Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules or violate any other provision of the IT Act.”
