MeitY says viral spread is the biggest risk from synthetic media

New Delhi: As global technology leaders, policymakers, and industry heads gather at the AI Impact Summit 2026 to discuss the future of artificial intelligence, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology placed a clear regulatory marker. 

The central risk in the synthetic media ecosystem, officials said, is not the creation of AI-generated content itself, but its amplification.

Speaking at the summit, Deepak Goyal from MeitY’s cyber law division said the real challenge lies in how quickly manipulated content spreads across digital platforms. “The issue is the amplification,” Goyal said, underlining that scale and speed are what turn manipulated media into a societal risk.

According to him, synthetic media becomes dangerous when it targets individuals. “A person’s likeness can be misused, their voice can be synthesised, and their credibility can be undermined,” Goyal noted. The immediate harm, he stressed, is personal. “Our strong opinion is that the individual is bearing the risk. So how do we empower that individual?”

Goyal outlined three principles that, in his view, should anchor regulatory thinking in the AI era. These include “the right to know, the right to protection against impersonation, and the right to remedy if something goes wrong.” The focus, he suggested, should be on ensuring that individuals have safeguards and recourse when technology is misused at scale.

The ministry clarified that current regulatory discussions are not meant to cover all AI-assisted outputs, such as text documents. Instead, attention is centred on high-risk audio-visual content that can go viral and distort public trust. In this framing, virality is what transforms manipulated media from a technical problem into a social one.

MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan echoed this approach in his comments to BestMediaInfo.com. “Our concern is not about moderating content,” he said. “The concern is about how technology can enable scale and virality, and how that can cause harm.”

This articulation signals a regulatory lens focused on dissemination rather than takedowns. The ministry’s emphasis is on understanding how AI systems, social media architecture and digital distribution models enable rapid spread, often before verification or redress mechanisms can respond.

Goyal also stressed that India has tried to remain technology-agnostic in its legislative approach. “For the last many years, we have tried to be technology-agnostic,” he said, cautioning that laws tied to specific tools may create friction as technologies evolve. If legislation becomes too prescriptive, he warned, it may not scale well in a fast-changing AI environment.

Drawing parallels with India’s digital public infrastructure, such as Aadhaar and UPI, Goyal noted that large-scale success was possible because frameworks were flexible and principle-based rather than tool-specific. 

“If legislation is very prescriptive, convergence becomes difficult,” he observed. “But if we create principle-based laws and leave implementation to industry, then global convergence becomes possible.”

The ministry acknowledged that industry players are already developing technical responses to synthetic media risks. These include watermarking systems, metadata tagging and other traceability tools. However, Goyal emphasised that any such solution must be “transparent, understandable, interoperable and immutable.”

The government’s role, he indicated, is to set broad obligations and define hard problems, while allowing industry to innovate on implementation. “Our goal is to enhance ease of living for the individual,” Goyal said, adding that supporting “ease of doing business” remains an equally important objective.

The discussion at the summit also placed India’s approach within a global context. With policymakers from multiple jurisdictions examining AI safeguards, MeitY suggested that regulatory convergence is possible if countries anchor their laws in shared principles rather than rigid technical mandates.

As AI-generated content becomes more sophisticated and easier to produce, the ministry’s message at the summit was clear. The regulatory spotlight is shifting from the act of creation to the dynamics of circulation. In an ecosystem where manipulated media can reach millions within minutes, the core challenge lies in managing virality and protecting individuals from harm at scale.