INTRODUCTION
Deepfakes are synthetic media which is creating videos, images, or audio recordings using machine learning techniques, most prominently Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). This machine learning systems have two neural networks against each other, a generator that creates artificial content, and a discriminator that attempts to discover it as a fake. Over successive training cycles, the generator becomes more efficient to produce the output , to the untrained eye, indistinguishable from authentic media.According to cyber security report, the volume of deepfake files detected online grew from approximately 500,000 in 2023 to an estimated 8 million by 2025 a trajectory that demands urgent legislative attention.
UNDERSTANDING DEEPFAKE TECHNOLOGY AND ITS VARIANTS
Deepfakes technology works on the machine learning model – autoencoder and Generative adversarial networks. Autoencoder is a type of neural network, it reconstruct the images, texts from the compression by the encoder to code----then reconstruct by the decoder. Generative adversarial networks is a 2 neural networks which are generator and discriminator to make the fake image from the real one. It boost the level of accuracy.
Video deepfakes typically employ face-swapping algorithms to superimpose one individual’s likeness onto another’s body, creating doctored footage that can impersonate public figures or imply private individuals in events that never happened.
Deepfakes audio employ voice formation models who instruct on a target’s speech style to copy their vocal tone, accent, and voice form which can cause grave questions about the relevancy of audio evidence in legal proceedings.
Deepfakes Images incorporate the defraud static photographs to change their facial expressions, alter the backgrounds, or replace subjects entirely. Most concerning is the emergence of multimodal deepfakes, which integrate synthetic video, cloned audio, and manipulated text into a single, coherent misleading output raising the difficulty of detection of deepfakes contents.
RISKS POSED BY DEEPFAKES IN INDIA
Privacy and Dignity Violation: Deepfakes pornography targeting females who came out with a new form of sexual outrage and annoyance. The illegal use of a individual’s face, voice or its personal identity without any permission or granting, directly breaches the individual’s rights which Article 21 Right to privacy. Deepfake technology endangers the constitutional protection by abusing the personal’s identity in digital spaces.
Political Distubances: It can manipulate speeches, statements or videos of political leaders to create a fog during elections . This can easily harm the democracy and may induce lawlessness or chaos in country.
Misinformation and Hate Speech: Falsified videos can provoke violence, mainly in India’s sensitive socio-political environment and may also try to attack on the India’s unity.
Decline of Trust- Widespreading these deepfakes content in social media platforms may leads to declining the trust on the genuine or authentic information, governance.
Technological Dark Age by distorted reality- Innocent people who are the followers of spiritual teachers of gurus, their manipulated statements by synthetic media may bring chaos, confusion, Dark Age in society.
MAJOR INCIDENTS OF DEEPFAKE DECEPTIONS
According to the pi-labs report 2026, deepfake content has witnessed an increase of approximately 900 percent over the past few years-a phenomenon described as a "pandemic of digital deception”
The Incident of Indian General Election (2024) : AI- generated deepfake clips of major party leaders, including Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, flooded in social media platforms. It can spread false narratives rapidly can undermine public trust in democratic institutions and create social unrest
Rashmika Mandanna (2023): A viral deepfake video of actress Rashmika Mandanna came up superimposing her face onto another woman's video, which is a deep burning issue on AI safety.
EXISTING LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN INDIA
India is currently lacking of dedicated legislation targeting deepfakes contents. However, a heterogeneous of existing laws which provides partial hope with significant limitations when applied to AI-generated content.
The Information Technology Act, 2000- Under section 66C penalises identity theft through digital means, while Section 66D criminalises cheating by impersonation using computer resources, carrying a maximum punishment of 3 years imprisonment and penalty up to ₹1 lakh. Sections 67 and 67A address the online transmission of obscene material and sexually explicit content, with penalties up to 5 years imprisonment. These provisions, while applicable, were not designed with synthetic AI-generated content in mind and their application to deepfakes remains subject to judicial interpretation.
In Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023- Section 319(2) addresses impersonation amounting to cheating, Section 336(1) covers forgery where deepfakes are used to fabricate documentary or evidentiary material and Sections 356(1) and (2) address defamation. While the BNS modernises India’s criminal code in several respects, it similarly does not specifically contemplate deepfake enabled offences.
Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 – It protects the personal data and privacy but if breach of data protection and privacy and violating the principles penalizing the offenders.
The Copyright Act, 1957- It may offer civil remedies where deepfakes incorporate copyrighted audiovisual material without authorisation, though establishing infringement in cases of entirely synthetic content remains legally complex.
MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (MEITY) GUIDELINES ON DEEPFAKES (MeitY Policy Frameworks & Rules)
IT Rules Update (2023–2025): The IT Rules, 2021, strengthened in 2023 and 2025, require platforms to detect and remove "synthetically generated information" that is false or misleading.
Compulsory Identification: Intermediaries must label AI-generated content with unique identifiers or metadata that trace back to the user or system generating it.
Legal Liability: Non-compliance allows platforms to lose their safe harbor protection (exemption from liability) under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000.
CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) Advisory (2024)
Risk Mitigation:- CERT-In government platforms advised to adopt AI-based detection systems to detect and prevent deepfakes scams and also provide some mitigating strategies for organizations like water mark your media.
Judicial approach and case laws
The Honourable Supreme Court verdict in K.S Puttaswamy case that Right to privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution and fundamental rights are protected by the article 32(Supreme Court) and article 226 (High Court).
In Shreya Singhal vs Union of India (2015): The Honourable court declared that section 66A of IT Act 2000 is an unconstitutional and ambiguous and emphasis on proportionality and free speech limits in digital regulation.
In Subramanian Swamy vs. Union of India (2016): The Honourable court emphasis to balancing privacy, reputation, and public interest in digital content. Recently Courts granted emergency relief for morphed images and non-consensual videos, however, no precedent exists for AI-generated synthetic media at scale, reflecting a judicial vacuum
CHALLENGES IN REGULATING DEEPFAKE TECHNOLOGY
Difficulty to find the source of deepfakes - The synthetic media content can be made from an unidentified foreign servers, so it might be challenging to identify the criminals and put criminal charges against those who are responsible under Indian law.
2. Lack of Awareness among Law Enforcement Agencies- Usually police and cyber law authorities have lack of technical expertise to investigate deepfakes content, which make the process slow of investigations and weak enforcement, this can lead to trust deficient in administrative system.
3. Freedom of speech and exploitation of it by digital world to make synthetic media content- The Law ministry create draconian law on the deepfake unhealthy matter, then there may be a possibility that it will also control on the creative or animated digitial art.
4. Judicial Challenges- The Courts also find hardship to distinguish between real and AI-generated evidence, which leads to difficulties and delay in legal proceedings.
5. The technology is evolving very rapidly and the process of our law making (legislative) body is sluggish which may create a regulatory vaccum in the digital world, and also crime will increase in deepfakes area.
NEED FOR LEGAL REFORMS
The following reforms are necessary:
The authority need to define Deepfakes in Law and create strong AI rules and regulations which can restrict the misuse of artificial intelligence and punish the offenders.
Need to prohibit the Malicious Use of Deepfakes: The law making bodies require to create legal and penalising provisions for the creation or spreading of deepfakes malicious content without consent, mainly for sexual, financial and political deepfakes.
We need to formulate the resources which ensure protection and regulate the synthetically defamed victim by the Right to be forgotten.
Faster Takedown Mechanisms: Social media platforms must be legally confined to remove deepfake content within a particular time frame, like EU’s Digital Services Act.
We need to promote Ethical Development of AI by PPP model, we could develop mechanisms to promote ethical transparency and accountability in the development of generative AI.
Building Cyber Crime Unit Capacity in Forensic: Government need to Invest in training and super specialised equipment for cyber-crime units to ensure capacities. So that they can easily investigate the case with transparency and accountability and penalize the offenders.
Public Awareness Campaigns: The government and local level system should inform and educate citizens about deepfakes and promote the use of responsible AI by loudspeakers, nukkad natak, videos.
Globally Cooperation: India need to collaborate with Interpol and global organisation ,to tackle down the deepfake related digital crime .
Need a rigorous transparency and accountability in social media platforms: The platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube should be accountable and transparent to the creation of deepfake content.
Strengthen digital forensic capabilities - Microsoft Video Authenticator, FaceForensics DeepwareScanner , Cloudsek.
CONCLUSION
The Bhagavad Gita’s injunction — “yadayada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati…” — that corrective action is necessary whenever disorder prevails, offers an apt frame for India’s regulatory moment. Deepfake technology, however innovative its underlying science, has become an instrument of identity violation, democratic subversion, and financial predation.
Right to privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 (Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India), and the welfare of citizens is the supreme purpose of law — saluspopuli suprema lex. What remains absent is the legislative will to translate these principles into a coherent, technology-specific regulatory regime.
As deepfake technology grows more sophisticated and more accessible, the cost of inaction compounds with each electoral cycle, each fraudulent transaction, and each individual whose dignity is violated by synthetic media. A balanced legal framework protects the fundamental rights without enabling censorship, and that holds both creators and platforms accountable.
REFRENCES
Discover Data Science. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.discoverdatascience.org: https://www.discoverdatascience.org/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-about-how-to-use-deepfake/
N R Divyashree, MKPM RV Institute of Legal Studies DEEPFAKES AND INDIAN CRIMINAL LAW: ADDRESSING THE GAPS IN LEGAL PROTECTION Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research Volume VII Issue III | ISSN: 2582-8878
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/ai-deepfakes-bad-laws-and-big-fat-indian-election
https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/13116/1/it_act_2000_updated.pdf
https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-04/250884_2_english_01042024.pdf
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https://www.certin.org.in/s2cMainServlet?pageid=PUBVLNOTES02&VLCODE=CIAD-2024-0060Supreme Court Cases-
1.Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
2.Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1.
3. Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 221.
Aditya Pratap Singh Legal Implications Of Deepfake Technology In Criminal Law|International Journal Of Law Management & Humanities [Issn 2581-5369] Volume 8 | Issue 1 2025
Juhi Chandel, Manisha Kundu Ai-Generated Deepfakes And The Legal Vacuum In India: A Constitutional Analysis Of Privacy, Consent, And Digital Harm Under Article 21 2025 Ijrti | Volume 10, Issue 11 November 2025 | Issn: 2456-3315
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