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India has introduced a new law requiring digital platforms to remove deepfake content within three hours of notification, tightening AI governance and compliance standards. Non-consensual adult imagery, such as deepfakes, should be removed by a platform within two hours instead of 24 hours previously.
MeitY condensed the previous 36-hour window after months of political pressure and headline-grabbing deepfake scandals. However, platforms warn that the clock now starts almost before an investigation can even open. Consequently, engineering, legal, and policy teams are scrambling to redesign moderation pipelines for assured compliance.
In the amended Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2026 notified on Tuesday, social media intermediaries will only need to label AI-generated and modified content that “such information appears to be real, authentic or true and depicts or portrays any individual or event in a manner that is, or is likely to be perceived as indistinguishable from a natural person or real-world event”.
The watermark proposal was part of the initial draft for AI rules that Meity had published on 22 October.
G.S.R. 120(E) entered the Gazette on 10 February 2026 and was activated ten days later. The operational deadline for platforms began on 20 February. Previously, intermediaries faced a 36-hour limit for general removals.
Significant Social Media Intermediaries should now display clear SGI labels and retain provenance metadata. Smaller platforms still depend on notice-and-action yet share the same accelerated clocks.
General removals: 36 hours - 3 hours
Intimate imagery: 24 hours - 2 hours
Grievance closure: 15 days - 7 days
SSMI threshold: 5 million Indian users
The automated triage systems classify the request, flag region, and assign trust-and-safety reviewers. However, complex copyright or parody cases rarely fit such rapid funnels. Consequently, many companies expect higher over-removal rates until machine learning classifiers mature. This escalation raises fresh safe-harbour questions. Such granular IT logging is now mandatory for audit trails.
Complaints related to content linked with defamation, harassment, and other legal violations will need to be resolved within 36 hours, instead of 72 hours.
The Deepfake Removal Law establishes the world’s most aggressive content deadline. Its success depends on the practical enforcement quality. Consequently, the next section unpacks how orders will actually move.
