India amended its 2021 IT Rules to require labeling and traceability of synthetic audio/visual content and to cut takedown compliance windows to as little as three hours for official orders and two hours for certain urgent user complaints, effective Feb. 20.

Platforms operating in India must retool moderation operations to meet 2–3 hour response SLAs, likely requiring 24/7 escalation, expanded trust-and-safety staffing, and automated intake/triage for government and high-priority user reports. The labeling and traceability mandate forces product changes to detect, tag, and retain provenance data for AI-generated media, increasing logging, storage, and audit requirements. The Feb. 20 start date compresses implementation timelines to days, raising near-term noncompliance and enforcement risk for firms without India-specific workflows and on-call coverage.