India lawmakers demand strict law to curb AI deepfake and misuse risks

India’s parliament is beginning to grapple in detail with the dark side of generative media, and the tone is noticeably harder than generic “need to regulate AI” statements. Singh’s intervention frames deepfakes not just as a social‑media annoyance but as a systemic threat to electoral legitimacy, personal safety and the basic functioning of democratic accountability. By name‑checking Slovakia’s 2023 election deepfake, the 2024 Biden robocall incident and a forecast that up to 90% of cybercrime‑related content could be deepfaked by 2026, he’s importing the global case file directly into India’s legislative record.([ibc24.in](https://www.ibc24.in/country/calls-for-a-stringent-law-from-the-government-to-deal-with-the-dangers-posed-by-the-misuse-of-ai-3456666.html))

For the AGI race, this is another data point that major democracies are converging on deepfake‑ and disinformation‑centric regulation as their first hard lever on AI deployment. India is a critical testbed: it has vast linguistic diversity, a huge social‑media footprint and an assertive state apparatus. If New Delhi opts for “stringent law” rather than softer codes of practice, it could accelerate the emergence of legally mandated watermarking, traceability and platform‑level content provenance systems—tools that will later be applied to frontier AGI models as well. At the same time, over‑broad rules could chill open‑source model work or independent research that touches politically sensitive content, nudging the race toward large, well‑capitalized incumbents who can absorb compliance costs.