The government Tuesday mandated social media platforms to prominently label AI-generated content and said such synthetic content must be embedded with identifiers.

Social media platforms must deploy automated tools to prevent AI content that is illegal, sexually exploitative or deceptive, a government order said.

Social media platforms cannot allow removal or suppression of AI labels or metadata once applied, the order added.

Introducing stricter norms to tackle AI-generated and synthetic content, including deepfakes, the Centre told the social media platforms to remove any such content flagged by a competent authority or courts within three hours.

The new rules will come into force from February 20, 2026. The amendments further compels platforms to bring in automated tools to detect and prevent AI content that is illegal, deceptive, sexually exploitative, non-consensual, or related to false documents, child abuse content, etc.