Notes from the Asia-Pacific region: India's AI governance push advances as courts, regulators weigh in

To say we are all utterly scorched by the unexpectedly intense summer in India is an understatement. This last week, India was one of the hottest countries in the world. Not that we let that come in the way of things. 

Voters in two key states, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, went to the polls with record turnouts. The Indian Premiere League is in full swing and we continue to devour the glorious mangos. 

And the digital trust and governance landscape continues to move at a frenetic pace. This past month has been particularly eventful on the front of artificial intelligence governance, with the central government making significant institutional moves even as courts stepped up to address AI-related harms.

In what could be, perhaps, the most significant development, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology announced 13 April the establishment of the AI Governance and Economic Group. This is India's first formal, top inter-ministerial body dedicated to coordinating AI policy across government. 

It will be chaired by Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Railways and Information and Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw with Minister of State, Electronics and IT Jitin Prasada as vice chairperson. Other members include a diverse set of representatives from various domains, including the government's principal scientific adviser and chief economic adviser, the CEO of NITI Aayog, and secretaries of telecommunications, economic affairs and science and technology, along with a representative of the National Security Council Secretariat.  

The AIGEG's mandate is rather broad: coordinating AI policy across ministries and departments; assessing labor market impacts of AI adoption; classifying AI use cases into "deploy," "pilot" and "defer" categories; and developing a roadmap for AI deployment over the next decade.

However, one notable gap that has led to a discussion in the public domain is the exclusion of sectoral regulators like the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the Competition Commission of India, the Data Protection Board, the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India and others. This has raised questions about the comprehensiveness of the governance architecture. 

Alongside the AIGEG, MeitY also constituted the Technology and Policy Expert Committee to provide technical and strategic advisory inputs. Chaired by the MeitY secretary, the TPEC includes representatives from the National Association of Software and Service Companies, the Data Security Council of India and the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology, as well as representatives from academia including Indian Institute of Technology Madras professor Balaraman Ravindran and IIT Gandhinagar Director Rajat Moona. 

The TPEC's work will shape how AI systems are regulated, what compliance requirements would apply and how India positions itself in global AI governance discussions. Collectively, the AIGEG-TPEC architecture represents a significant step toward operationalizing the India AI Governance Guidelines released during the AI Impact Summit earlier this year.

Meanwhile, proposed amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 continue to generate considerable debate. 

AI-generated content labels must now be "continuous and clearly visible" throughout the duration of the content in visual formats, replacing the earlier, less stringent "prominently visible" standard. For audio content, a clear upfront disclosure would be required. Platforms would also be required to embed permanent metadata or identifiers in AI-generated content, making it traceable to the originating system.

These developments build on the IT Amendment Rules that came into force 20 Feb., which introduced the concept of "synthetically generated information" and imposed obligations on platforms to detect, label and restrict harmful AI-generated content.  

The amendments have drawn strong reactions. Press bodies, including the Editors Guild of India and the DIGIPUB News India Foundation, have called for the "unconditional withdrawal" of the draft amendments, citing threats to press freedom. The Software Freedom Law Centre, India warned the amendments could lead to "unprecedented amounts of digital censorship." 

As India figures out governance of AI, the courts have continued to step up. This month, with action around AI-related personality rights. On 15 April, the Bombay High Court indicated it would issue a John Doe injunction to protect Bollywood actor Kartik Aaryan's personality rights, ordering the immediate removal of AI-generated deepfake videos, voice clones and unauthorized merchandise exploiting his likeness. Aaryan had filed a lawsuit against several e-commerce platforms and social media intermediaries, seeking INR150 million in damages.  

Days later, 21 April, the Delhi High Court fortified the personality rights of Telugu superstar Allu Arjun in a similar ex-parte ruling, restraining defendants from exploiting the actor's name, image, voice and gestures through AI tools, deepfakes and unauthorized merchandise.  

These rulings signal the judiciary's growing comfort with addressing AI-related harms using existing legal frameworks, in the absence of any standalone regulations.

In other news, TRAI Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti, speaking at the COAI Digicom Summit 2026 24 April, highlighted the growing challenge of indoor connectivity as data consumption surges, particularly with the advent of AI. He noted the TRAI has introduced a regulatory framework for rating properties for quality of indoor digital connectivity infrastructure. 

Separately, the TRAI released a consultation paper 6 April on forming a regulatory framework for Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television and Application-based Linear Television Distribution services, an important step in regulating the convergence of traditional broadcasting and digital streaming. The TRAI also proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Telecom Consumer Protection Regulations, seeking to mandate voice-and-SMS-only plans across all validity periods to protect consumers who don't need data services.  

This month also saw the release of some interesting statistics. OpenAI released its 2026 Capability Gap report for India in April, and the findings are illuminating. India ranks among the top five nations globally in "thinking capability usage per person" — a metric based on reasoning tokens consumed by ChatGPT Plus users. After the launch of OpenAI's Codex app in February, India witnessed four-time growth in Codex users within just two weeks — the fastest adoption curve globally.  

However, the report reveals a stark digital divide: the top 10 cities in India account for roughly 50% of all ChatGPT users, even though they represent less than 10% of the country's population. This makes AI adoption in India approximately three times more concentrated than in Brazil, Germany, the U.K. or U.S. 

As India races ahead on AI adoption, ensuring this doesn't become yet another urban-rural divide will be a critical policy challenge.  

Fun and busy times ahead, indeed.