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AI governance, safety and ethics
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
Showing 2 of 7 subjects, those that changed from 1 to 15 August 2026.Show all
The European Union's AI Act
Copy link to The European Union's AI ActPrelims and Mains
The Act's method is risk based regulation: the duties on a system scale with the harm a use could do. A ban stands at one end of that scale and a labelling duty near the other.
- The AI Act became applicable on 2 August 2026, the first comprehensive artificial intelligence law anywhere.
- It had been in force since August 2024, so its duties bite two years on.
- An enforcement team was launched the same day.
- Compliance deadlines for standalone high risk systems were pushed back to December 2027.
- Content generated by artificial intelligence must be labelled or watermarked under the Act's transparency duties.
- Anthropic has said it will embed machine readable watermarks in Claude's text and files to meet that duty.
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
Background reading: The Hindu, 1 Aug 2026: EU AI Act becomes applicable (opens in a new tab)
Deepfake labelling rules
Copy link to Deepfake labelling rulesPrelims and Mains
India reaches artificial intelligence through the platform that carries the content rather than through the model that made it. These rules bind the intermediary, and on 10 February 2026 they were amended to reach what a machine makes.
- The Information Technology Rules, 2021 place duties on intermediaries, including social media platforms.
- A significant social media intermediary is a platform with 50 lakh registered users or more.
- Such platforms must use automated tools to stop child sexual abuse material and the like before it spreads.
- The amendment covers synthetically generated information, which is where a deepfake now sits in Indian law.
- Permitted artificial intelligence content must carry clear labels and traceable metadata.
- Takedown on a court order or a reasoned government intimation falls from 36 hours to three.
- A grievance must be settled in 36 hours rather than 72, and a sensitive case such as nudity or impersonation in two hours rather than 24.
What changed
6 Aug 2026
PIB, 6 Aug 2026: Deepfakes: labelling rules and three-hour takedown (opens in a new tab)
30 Jul 2026Updatealso in news
- Thirteen responsible AI projects are running under the IndiaAI Mission, including Saakshya, a deepfake detection framework from IIT Jodhpur and IIT Madras.