India to release AI safety consultation paper within a month

India's Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said on October 8, 2026, that the Union government will publish a consultation paper on AI regulation centred on safety. He said he had directed the ministry to release it within a month. The minister made the remarks at the launch of the World Bank's 2026 World Development Report.

Vaishnaw tied the planned rules closely to the spread of deepfakes in India. He described the harms AI is causing society as a nuisance capable of creating serious problems and setting a bad precedent. The answer, he argued, must combine technological and legal tools.

The minister stressed that industry will carry much of the burden. "We have to have the stakeholders onboarded because bulk of this regulation will have to be taken by the industry itself," Vaishnaw said.

Government procurement and GPUs

For public sector use, Vaishnaw said the government will empanel selected AI models and solutions. Firms and startups that make the list will then be able to bid in tenders issued by any department seeking to deploy AI. The government has also issued a request for expression of interest for graphics processing units to run AI workloads. According to the minister, estimated demand stands at 10,000 GPUs, and the first tender will cover 5,000.

Vaishnaw said the government has worked with industry on AI in the same way it did in semiconductors and telecoms. He added that MeitY, the Ministry of Education and industry will soon hold a series of joint workshops so that universities and colleges can adopt a new curriculum in their programmes.

The World Bank's view

This year's World Development Report is titled "The Promise of Artificial Intelligence". It argues that AI offers low- and middle-income countries a historic chance to tackle development problems that have resisted solutions for decades. The report recommends that developing nations first adopt and adapt the technology before advancing it, and warns governments against creating AI rules that conflict with one another.

The forthcoming paper would be one of India's most concrete steps yet toward rules on AI safety and synthetic media. Its heavy reliance on industry self-regulation is likely to raise questions about how binding the eventual framework will be.