Government weighing local storage of AI models to mitigate risk associated with them

The government is weighing local storage of AI models to mitigate any risk associated with them and prevent flow of data outside the country, a senior government official said on Monday.

While speaking on the sidelines of Digital Threat Report 2024 for the BFSI sector by SISA and Cert-In, Ministry of Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan also shared with reporters that the rules of Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act may be in place within 6-8 weeks that will play key role in prevention of personal data leaks.

When asked about government decisions on Chinese AI platforms and risk associated with them, Krishnan said that the government is watching LLMs (large language models) in terms of their usage and impact.

"The true problem lies when data gets shared on a portal or on a mobile app because then the data may go out of the country and may sort of feed the way that a particular model is trained and a lot of the data may go out. On the private side, if the model itself is hosted in India, then the risks of data going out are far more mitigated considerably. All of these factors will be considered before any final decision is taken," Krishnan said.

He said that personal data leaks will be checked once the DPDP Act is brought into force.

"We have received the comments, detailed comments on the rules. We are examining them rule by rule. We are examining what the comments are and if any changes are required. We may have to complete another process of internal consultation after that is completed. I would estimate it will take about six to eight weeks," Krishnan said.

Talking about cyber security developments, Krishnan said that there is greater awareness among people to report the incidents.

"Traditionally, in India, people are warned not to report many of these breaches. So, it is a good thing that reporting is happening so that we understand what is the extent of the problem and where the problems are coming up," Krishnan said.

He said the increase in reporting also implies that the country's overall surveillance is improving and it also means that we have more capacity to find out incidents happening across the entire cybersecurity space.