Examine the role of technologies such as digital watermarking in fighting deepfakes and protecting the integrity of public institutions.

Digital watermarking hides a verifiable signature inside audio-visual content to prove where it came from. AI-generated deepfakes make real and fake harder to tell apart. Provenance tools are becoming a first line of defence for the credibility of courts, legislatures and governments.

Role in fighting deepfakes

• Authentication: platforms and viewers can check whether a clip came from the original source. Tampering breaks the signature.
• Regulatory backing: MeitY's February 2026 amendment to the IT Rules, 2021 requires platforms to label synthetically generated information and embed tamper-resistant provenance metadata [2].
• Platform accountability: verifiable markers let intermediaries detect fakes at scale. Platforms that fail to act risk losing safe harbour under Section 79, IT Act.

Protecting public institutions: the court-feed case

• Live streaming, grounded in open justice (Swapnil Tripathi, 2018), made court footage public. That also exposed it to manipulation and monetisation.
• The e-Committee's Model Rules vest copyright in the court and prohibit unauthorised recording or sharing [3][4].
• In October 2026, the SC directed MeitY to frame measures against commercial misuse of court feeds. Advocate Prashant Bhushan proposed a verifiable digital signature or watermark on every official clip [1].

Limitations

• Genuine but misleading: a real clip cut out of context still carries a valid watermark, and most misuse is selective editing, not fabrication.
• Technical gaps: compression or re-recording can strip markers, and detection varies across platforms.
• Over-censorship: aggressive takedowns may also remove lawful reporting, which chills Article 19(1)(a) rights.

Way forward

• Fold court-clip authentication into the existing IT Rules framework instead of building a parallel regime [2].
• Have the e-Committee set a uniform provenance standard for all High Courts [3].
• Purpose-based regulation: penalise commercial misuse, license news and educational use, and provide a quick appeal to the court Registry.
• Run digital literacy campaigns so citizens learn to verify provenance.

Watermarking answers "is this real?" but not "is this fair?". Combined with clear law, platform accountability, appeal safeguards and public awareness, it lets institutions stay transparent without losing credibility. This upholds open justice and SDG 16's goal of accountable, trusted institutions.