Ashwini Vaishnaw said India is talking about age-based social media limitations at the AI Impact Summit in 2026.

Tuesday marks the start of the second day of the five-day summit at Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, one day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the expo, which includes 13 country pavilions and 600 entrepreneurs.  PM Modi engaged with companies at the expo on the opening day, emphasizing India’s position as a hotspot for artificial intelligence. Traffic jams, logistical delays, and high attendance were all observed.

On Tuesday, Union Health Minister JP Nadda is anticipated to introduce two significant projects: the Benchmarking Open Data Platform for Health AI (BODH) and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare for India (SAHI).

The AI Impact Summit 2026 has attracted participants, attendees, and international leaders from more than 100 nations. President Emmanuel Macron of France, Pedro Sanchez Perez-Castejon of Spain, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece, and Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, are among the twenty prime ministers or presidents attending the summit. 

The three ‘Sutras’—’People, Planet, and Progress’—that form the foundation of the summit, according to the Ministry of External Affairs, express India’s framework for global collaboration in the field of artificial intelligence. Global leaders, legislators, innovators, and subject-matter experts from all around the world are expected to attend the event.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Vaishnaw said age-based regulation “has now been accepted by many countries” and added that the government is in conversation with platforms on both deepfakes and age-related controls.

“Right now we are in a conversation regarding deepfakes, regarding age-based restrictions with the various social media platforms and… what is the right way to go about this,” he said. The minister did not name specific companies involved in the discussions.

The remarks follow months after Australia imposed a law mandating that popular networks like YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok delete accounts belonging to users under the age of sixteen or risk steep fines.

Vaishnaw’s comments are among the first public signals from a top government official that such steps are being actively considered, even though India has not made any announcements of a similar nature.Additionally, he demanded more stringent regulation of online information manipulation. Vaishnaw stated, “We need much stronger regulation on deepfakes,” adding that it is becoming more and more important to shield society and children from the growing risks associated with the internet. 

India’s artificial intelligence regulations were strengthened this week, requiring social media companies to properly identify information produced by AI and to remove it within three hours of a request from the government.With a population of over 1.4 billion, any new limitations in India may have a big impact on multinational digital companies like Google and Meta, who both have hundreds of millions of users there.

Regarding investments, Vaishnaw stated that India anticipates receiving up to $200 billion in inflows over the course of the next two years, spread throughout the five tiers of the artificial intelligence stack. In addition to infrastructure spending, another $17 billion is anticipated to go into the deep-tech and application layers.