Supreme Court Stays Gujarat HC Proceedings In Plea To Regulate Deepfake, AI Content, As Centre Seeks Transfer Of Case To SC

The Supreme Court has stayed proceedings before the Gujarat High Court in a PIL raising concerns about the rise in deepfake and AI-generated content circulating on digital and social media platforms.

A bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana passed the order, while issuing notice on the Union's plea for transfer of the case to the Supreme Court. Advocate Zoheb Hossain submitted during the hearing that the Court has interdicted similar proceedings before other High Courts and the cases are now pending before the Supreme Court.

To recap, in April, the High Court issued notice to social media intermediaries 'X', Meta, Google, Reddit, etc. asking them to respond to affidavits filed by the State and Central governments in respect of practical implementation of the legislative framework to ensure strict compliance of due diligence obligations under Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 as amended by the Amendment Rules, 2026.

In the interim the court asked the intermediaries to ensure that they onboard the Centre's SAHYOG Portal for timely action and better coordination with law enforcement agencies.

Referring to the contentions in the affidavits of the State Government and the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, a division bench said that issue needing consideration pertained to strict enforcement and uniform implementation of the existing statutory regime in the larger public interest, where concerns have been shown over implementation at the ends of the intermediaries.

The court asked the intermediaries to ensure "swift action/response" to the statutory notices issued under Section 79(3)(b) IT Act 2000 for ensuring adherence to "time bound takedown obligations" in compliance with the IT Rules.

The State in its affidavit gave certain suggestions including framing of a policy providing for robust regulatory framework mandating immediate coordination mechanism between the investigating authority and the digital service providers. It was stated that the objective of the regulatory framework is not to restrict legitimate expression, but to ensure that the digital platforms are not misused for creation and dissemination of unlawful content capable of destabilizing public order or undermining democratic institutions.

The Central Government submitted that it has developed SAHYOG Portal, for routing intimations under Section 79(3)(b) read with Rule 3(1)(d). The portal has been operational since October 2024, facilitating immediate, coordinated and time bound action by bringing all authorized law enforcement agencies and intermediaries on a single platform, enabling swift takedown of unlawful synthetically generated information and access to subscriber information, logs and judicial evidence for identification of offending users.

It was submitted that as on that date, 524 IT intermediaries had been onboarded to the SAHYOG portal, including respondents no.5 (Meta) and 6 (Google). However others, including respondent no.7 (X/formerly Twitter) had not yet onboarded or fully integrated with the portal and often "fail to respond" to the take down notices under Section 79(3)(b).