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How artificial intelligence is governed: national and international rules, safety and the risks of frontier models, deepfakes, copyright, bias, liability and autonomous weapons. Prelims has asked about the AI Action Summit in Paris.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2025: the AI Action Summit held in Paris
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The European Union's AI Act
Copy link to The European Union's AI ActPrelims and Mains
LeadThe European Union's AI Act comes into applicationAugust 2026
Why in news
The European Union's AI Act became applicable on 2 August 2026, two years after it came into force, and the European Union launched a team to enforce it. It is the first comprehensive law on artificial intelligence anywhere.
Background
- Most countries, India among them, govern artificial intelligence through existing laws on data, platforms and consumer protection.
- The European Union chose a single law for all uses of artificial intelligence.
- Its method is risk based regulation: the duties on a system grow with the harm its use could do.
- Because European rules bind any firm that sells into Europe, they tend to become the standard elsewhere, the so called Brussels effect.
The four levels of risk
- Unacceptable risk: banned outright, for example social scoring.
- High risk: uses in hiring, credit, policing and infrastructure must pass a conformity assessment before they reach the market.
- Limited risk: transparency duties, so that content made by artificial intelligence is labelled or watermarked.
- Minimal risk: free of duties.
- General purpose models carry their own duties on documentation and copyright.
Already being softened
- Deadlines for standalone high risk systems were pushed to December 2027.
- An amending package, the AI Omnibus, extends deadlines and simplifies compliance.
- The lesson drawn is that a law on a fast moving technology has to be revised as it goes.
How India regulates instead
- India reaches artificial intelligence through the platform that carries the content, not the model that made it.
- The amendment of February 2026 to the Information Technology Rules, 2021 brought synthetically generated information under the rules.
- Such content must carry labels and traceable metadata, and takedown on an order falls from 36 hours to three hours.
- India is considering a law of its own, and has so far preferred sector by sector governance.
Why it matters to India
- Indian firms that sell software and services into Europe must comply.
- The Act is the template against which every other regulator, India's included, now argues.
The way forward
- Regulate by risk, so that small firms are not loaded with the duties meant for dangerous uses.
- Use regulatory sandboxes and periodic review, so that rules keep pace with the technology.
- Make labelling of synthetic content work in practice, through common technical standards for watermarks.
Prelims facts
- The AI Act came into force in August 2024 and became applicable on 2 August 2026.
- Social scoring is in the banned category.
- India's deepfake rules sit in the Information Technology Rules, 2021, as amended in February 2026.
- A significant social media intermediary is a platform with 50 lakh or more registered users in India.
The European Union's AI Act, in force since August 2024 and applicable from 2 August 2026, is the first comprehensive artificial intelligence law anywhere, and its method is risk based regulation: the duties on a system scale with the harm a use could do. Some uses are banned outright, such as social scoring; high risk uses, in hiring, credit, policing and infrastructure, must pass a conformity assessment before they reach the market; limited risk uses carry transparency duties, so content generated by artificial intelligence must be labelled or watermarked; the rest is free. General purpose models carry their own duties on documentation and copyright. It matters to India because Indian firms selling into Europe must comply, and because it is the template every other regulator argues with.
Unacceptable risk
- Some uses of artificial intelligence are banned outright
High risk
- A system needs a conformity assessment before it reaches the market
Limited risk
- Lighter checks apply
What changed
14 Aug 2026LeadThe European Union's AI Act comes into application