Digital India Bill — Deepfake & Synthetic Media Provisions
India is replacing the Information Technology Act, 2000 with the Digital India Bill (also referenced as the Digital India Act / DIA). The bill — drafted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) — introduces dedicated provisions for synthetic media and deepfakes. This page is the short operational read for AI video platforms with users or distribution in India.
Why India moved on synthetic media
In November 2023, a deepfake video of actress Rashmika Mandanna circulated on Indian social platforms and triggered a national response. Within weeks MeitY issued advisories to intermediaries under the existing IT Rules 2021 directing them to take down synthetic content within 36 hours of notice. The Digital India Bill consolidates and extends those advisories into primary statute: explicit identification of synthetic content, accelerated takedown timelines, and penalties for platforms that fail to implement reasonable consent or labelling controls when a real, identifiable person is depicted.
The bill operates alongside the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP), which already classifies a person's facial likeness as personal data requiring lawful basis for processing. A generative platform that creates output of a real person without a verifiable consent record now faces exposure under both the DPDP Act and the Digital India Bill's synthetic-media chapter.
What the bill actually requires of platforms
- Identification. Synthetic content of an identifiable person must be machine-readable as AI-generated, with a chain back to the platform that produced it.
- Consent. Generation of content depicting a real person requires demonstrable consent of that person — not just terms-of-service acceptance by the uploading user.
- Takedown. Intermediaries must remove flagged synthetic content within a defined window from notice (the IT Rules baseline is 36 hours; the DIB sharpens this for non-consensual deepfakes).
- Grievance officer. A named officer resident in India must accept and process complaints from depicted persons.
“Intermediaries shall ensure that artificially generated information that depicts an identifiable person is clearly labelled as such and that mechanisms exist for the depicted person to seek expeditious removal, where consent has not been obtained.”
Where ActorHub fits
ActorHub is a verifiable consent layer that AI video platforms embed before the generation call. Two things directly map to the Digital India Bill:
- Pre-generation consent check with a signed receipt. Every check returns an ES256-signed token tying the depicted identity, the platform, the scope and a request ID. A platform that holds the token can produce evidence of consent at notice; a platform that cannot, cannot.
- Withdrawal that propagates across every integrated platform. When a depicted person revokes consent through any integrated platform, the next consent check from every other integrated platform returns withdrawn — operationalising the takedown obligation across the network, not just at one platform.
Evaluating ActorHub for an Indian platform?
Request access and we approve manually within 2 business days. Sandbox key in 24 hours, production rollout in under 2 weeks for most platforms. Free tier covers 100 consent checks / day.