The government's advisory on artificial intelligence (AI) is applicable to significant players and untested platforms, and not on startups, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Monday.

After a controversy over a response of Google's AI platform to queries related to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government on March 1 issued an advisory for social media and other platforms to label under-trial AI models and prevent hosting unlawful content.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in the advisory issued to intermediaries and platforms warned of criminal action in case of non-compliance.

"Advisory is aimed at the significant platforms and permission seeking from Meity is only for large platforms and will not apply to startups. Advisory is aimed at untested AI platforms from deploying on the Indian Internet," Chandrasekhar said on social media platform X.

All digital platforms are required to ensure that the use of artificial intelligence model(s), large language models, generative AI, softwares or algorithms on or through its computer resource do not permit users to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any unlawful content.

The advisory asked use of under-testing, unreliable AI models, generative AI, etc and its availability to the users on Indian Internet with the explicit permission of the government and be deployed only after appropriately labelling the possible and inherent fallibility or unreliability of the output generated.

"Process of seeking permission, labelling and consent-based disclosure to user about untested platforms is insurance policy to platforms who can otherwise be sued by consumers. Safety and trust of India's Internet is a shared and common goal for the government, users and platforms," Chandrasekhar said.

Google's AI platform Gemini made uncharitable comments about Prime Minister Modi's policies. The response of Gemini to queries about the Prime Minister led to a strong reaction from the government, with Chandrasekhar calling it a violation of IT laws.

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