The IT ministry (MeitY) has proposed a consent-based framework to facilitate data sharing for training AI models in India. 

Called the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) for AI training, the framework aims to help startups, businesses and academic institutions access large-scale, India-specific datasets to develop AI models while protecting citizens’ privacy and ensuring compliance with the DPDP Act. 

The DEPA for AI training also proposes a techno-legal architecture to enable organisations to collaborate on AI model training without directly transferring underlying datasets. 

With this, the ministry aims to foster access to datasets for researchers and businesses looking to train AI models. The guidelines have been formulated in collaboration with think tank iSPIRT.

The proposed architecture builds on India’s existing DEPA framework, which already supports consent-based data sharing through initiatives such as Account Aggregator. The new framework encompasses the following technical pillars: 

The proposed framework also defines key stakeholders for enabling safe sharing of data for training AI models:

Under the DEPA framework, TDPs would first register their datasets on a data exchange platform after anonymising and encrypting them. The datasets would then be tagged with metadata and cryptographic identifiers for traceability. 

TDCs can then request a dataset for their specific use cases, and an electronic contract system checks their requests against data-sharing policies and governance rules before granting access. 

Once access is given, the model is then trained within a secure data environment using differential privacy methods, ensuring that the raw data remains inaccessible to consumers. 

The framework also proposes that trained models must undergo independent checks for bias, fairness, security, safety and explainability.

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