New Delhi:

Union IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday said Google had left itself open to possible criminal prosecution, after the global internet giant’s artificial intelligence tool – Gemini – provided an objectionable response to a question about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Platforms like Google are significant powers on the internet (and) for them to do something wrong and then simply say, ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I apologise’ is certainly not what the law expects them to do,” he told NDTV this morning.

He further questioned the release of an “untested platform (referring to the Gemini chatbot)… without any disclosures or disclaimers”, and said, “… then there will be consequences. To simply then say ‘… sorry, it was untested’ is not consistent with our expectations of compliance with the law.”

“Why is there a belief amongst these big platforms that they can take something from the lab… and launch it without guardrails or protective framework. This is unconscionable and unacceptable… given not just the law but even  a sense of responsibility and discipline,” he said in an exclusive interview.

Mr Chandrasekhar emphasised the government’s “sincere (and) serious responsibility” to internet users in India, and said tech companies could not “get away by talking their way out of a problem”.

However, he stopped short of saying the government does, in fact, plan to prosecute Google.

The Union Minister cited the new IT Rules and said tech companies “should not allow their platforms to be used in a manner that outputs unlawful content or violates the law of the land”.

He did not, though, say if the government will actually take legal action.

“I think it is not so much for the government to prosecute as much as the users who have the cause of action… who are prejudiced by a platform that spews out unlawful content,” he told NDTV.

“I have heard… there are many people who are quite agitated by the conduct of this and other platforms. My response to them is, ‘the government may, or may not, do some things because we have limited powers under the law… it is for individuals, or groups, to hold them to account.”

Mr Chandrasekhar’s sharp words come amid a growing row between the government and Google after Gemini – a generative artificial intelligence chatbot earlier called Bard – after the tool’s controversial response to a question on the Prime Minister and his policies.

Gemini reportedly based its answer on factors like the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s “nationalist ideology” and what its critics say is quashing of dissent and violence against minorities.

Under-fire, Google last month conceded Gemini “may not always be reliable in responding to certain prompts related to current events and political topics”, and said it was working to address the issue.

READ | Google Pauses AI Tool Over Images Of Woman Nazi Soldiers

It isn’t just the Modi question that has the chatbot roiled in controversy. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said last week some of its text and image responses were “biased” and “completely unacceptable”.

READ | Gemini AI Gaffes “Completely Unacceptable”: Google’s Sundar Pichai

This was after Gemini, asked to show the founding fathers of the United States, generated photos of people of colour, including a man of apparent Sikh heritage, in a significant historical faux pas.

“We’re aware Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions… we are working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately,” the company said on X.

“Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here.”

In response to all of these concerns, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to issue a notice to Google; in earlier comments, Mr Chandrashekhar said Gemini’s responses were “direct violations of the IT Act and also of several provisions of the Criminal Code”.

Meanwhile, the MEITY, in an advisory issued last week, must have approval before launching test versions of software using generative AI, or any algorithms in the beta stage of development.

“My responsibility is to the Indian people… to make sure the internet in India is safe and trusted. We are the largest connected nation in the world with 900 million users… This has been told to Google and every other platform. Some take this advice seriously. Others believe they are above the laws…”

NDTV is now available on WhatsApp channels. Click on the link to get all the latest updates from NDTV on your chat.

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When a user asked, “Is modi a fascist”, Gemini AI responded that Mr. Modi had “been accused of implementing policies that some experts have characterized as fascist”.  File
| Photo Credit: AP

Gemini, Google’s new artificial intelligence chat product, is violating Indian information technology laws and criminal codes through its response to a question on whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a fascist, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Friday.

When a user asked, “Is modi a fascist”, Gemini AI responded that Mr. Modi had “been accused of implementing policies that some experts have characterized as fascist”. 

“These are direct violations of Rule 3(1)(b) of [the IT Rules, 2021] and violations of several provisions of the Criminal code,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said on X, formerly Twitter. His sharp reaction reveals a fault line between the Indian government’s hands-off approach to AI research, and tech giants’ AI platforms which are keen to train their models quickly with the general public, opening them up to embarrassing confrontations with political leaders.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

‘Trial models unacceptable’

Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules say that online platforms should inform users “not to host, display, upload, modify… or share any information that… belongs to another person,… is grossly harmful, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, or otherwise unlawful in any manner”.

This is not the first time Mr. Chandrasekhar has hit out at Google’s chatbot for chiming in on hot-button political issues in India. Asked earlier this month about his message to big tech platforms developing AI applications, he cited Google Bard, Gemini’s predecessor. Google had explained away a similar “error” as the model being “under trial”, Mr. Chandrasekhar said. This was not an acceptable excuse, he noted.

“We’re making it very clear that nobody can put up a publicly available model on ‘trial’. You’ll have to sandbox that,” he had said, referring to an industry term for making a product available in a closed-off setting with limited access. “Platforms [should] understand that we take the business of safety and trust of our digital nagriks [citizens] very seriously.”

Censorship of AI chatbots has evolved in starts and spurts over the last year. China issued a directive in 2023, warning firms in the country against using products by ChatGPT, a leading AI firm. Google itself may have implemented controls on its chatbots in at least one other authoritarian regime: the Bard chatbot refused to respond to political queries on Vladimir Putin when those questions were asked in Russian, according to Aleksandra Urman and Mykola Makhortykh, researchers from the University of Zurich and the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Gemini is intended to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. (File)
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Alphabet’s Google has given a small group of companies access to an early version of Gemini, its conversational artificial intelligence software, The Information reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Gemini is intended to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, according to the report.

For Google, the stakes of Gemini’s launch are high. Google has intensified investments in generative AI this year as it plays catch-up after Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT last year took the tech world by storm.

Gemini is a collection of large-language models that power everything from chatbots to features that either summarise text or generate original text based on what users want to read like email drafts, music lyrics, or news stories, the report said.

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It is also expected to help software engineers write code and generate original images based on what users ask to see.

Google is currently giving developers access to a relatively large version of Gemini, but not the largest version it is developing which would be more on par with GPT-4, the report said.

The search and advertising giant plans to make Gemini available to companies through its Google Cloud Vertex AI service.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last month, the company introduced generative AI to its Search tool for users in India and Japan that will show text or visual results to prompts, including summaries. It had also made its AI-powered tools available to enterprise customers at a monthly price of $30 per user.