The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) released a draft of changes to IT Rules 2021 on 22 October 2025. These are for labeling and tracing deepfake and AI-generated content. This means it will be clearly marked that the content is not real, but AI-generated. This will help control problems like misinformation and electoral fraud. The ministry says this is necessary to keep the internet safe, trusted and accountable. The ministry has requested feedback from stakeholders. This can be sent by email until 06 November. Audio video labels must be placed on all AI content Under the new Rule 3(3), any social media platform that allows creation of ‘synthetically generated information’ like AI content will have to place prominent labels on all such content. They will also need to embed permanent unique metadata/identifiers. These labels will cover at least 10% area visually, or will be heard in the first 10% time in audio. No one will be able to change, hide or delete the metadata. Platforms will have to adopt technical methods to check whether it is AI-generated or not before uploading. Social Media Companies Will Be Responsible The main responsibility will fall on Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs), which are platforms with more than 5 million (50 lakh) users under IT rules. This includes platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat. These platforms will follow standards for labeling, metadata tagging and visibility. What is the timeline? When will it be implemented? The draft was released on 22 October 2025. Now MeitY will take feedback until 06 November. After that final rules will be made, but exact date has not been specified. Experts believe it will be implemented in a few months, as deepfake issues are increasing rapidly. How will it affect users and industry? Good for users – now they can easily identify fake content, misinformation will decrease. However, creators will need to take extra steps, like adding labels. The challenge for the industry will be that they’ll need to make tech investments for metadata and verification, which may make operations slightly more expensive. But overall, this will help prevent AI misuse. What did MeitY say about these rules? MeitY clearly stated that this step is to create an ‘open, safe, trusted and accountable Internet’ that will handle risks like misinformation, impersonation and election manipulation coming from generative AI. This will make the internet more trustworthy.
