#FactCheck: Viral Dance Video Misattributed to Ram Mandir Trust CEO Jitendra Mishra

Introduction

On September 1–2, 2026, the G20 Innovation Ministerial was held at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This gathering of ministers, senior officials, and high-profile technology executives marked the first sectoral ministerial of the G20 presidency held by the U.S. government this year. The two consensus documents that resulted from the meeting,  the G20 Innovation Ministerial Statement and the Carolina Principles, are expected to dictate how the largest world economies regulate AI for many years. In this post, the content of the two documents will be discussed along with their role in the larger context of the U.S. G20 presidency that will culminate in the leaders’ summit in Miami scheduled for December and the response of the tech community, allied governments, and civil society to the framework.

The U.S. Presidency and the Road to Chapel Hill

The United States assumed the rotating G20 presidency on December 1, 2025, and immediately signalled a departure from the priorities pursued by South Africa, the previous chair, whose 2025 Johannesburg summit had emphasised climate finance and debt sustainability for developing economies, a summit the U.S. ultimately boycotted. In its opening statement, the State Department announced that the American presidency would organise the year around three themes: reducing regulatory burdens on economic growth, securing affordable and reliable energy supply chains, and "pioneering new technologies and innovations". The Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill was the clearest single expression of that third pillar, and it was scheduled ahead of the finance ministers' meetings in Asheville and the foreign ministers' meetings in Atlanta, with the full cycle set to close at the Leaders' Summit at Trump National Doral in Miami on December 14–15, 2026.

Symbolism was deliberately built into the choice of venue. White House science and technology advisor Michael Kratsios, who chaired the ministerial, argued that North Carolina's Research Triangle and its status as home to the nation's first public university made Chapel Hill an apt backdrop for a statement about translating research into commercial and public benefit. The venue also produced the framework's name: the Carolina Principles.

The Innovation Ministerial Statement: Six Pillars

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The Innovation Ministerial Statement is organised around six pillars: 

pro-innovation policy frameworks; technology for opportunity and prosperity (chiefly AI adoption in public services); 

• skilled technical workforce development; 
• intellectual property policy for AI; 
• standards that support both AI-enabled standards development and standards for AI systems; and
•  industrial innovation and supply-chain resilience. 

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All six ideas run together in one concept: "Old-fashioned or too rigid regulatory systems can limit innovation in an unintended way," and successful policymaking, short of restricting entrepreneurial initiatives, consists of creating the type of regulatory framework which is effective and flexible. The language is also marked by sensitivity to sovereignty, stating repeatedly that countries have the right "to formulate their policies and express their sovereignty on issues of emerging technology governance" and thus make it possible for twenty countries with different legislative customs to agree upon one text.

On IP, the statement treats the copyright-AI interface as unresolved by design, noting that questions about how doctrines such as prior consent and fair-use-style exceptions apply to AI training "remain appropriately resolved through each member's established legal processes" rather than through a harmonised international rule. On standards, it frames AI itself as a tool for regulatory efficiency for comparing safety and performance data across jurisdictions and reducing duplicative testing while affirming that market competition, not government selection, should determine which AI models succeed.

The Carolina Principles: Structuring the Technology Lifecycle

Where the Ministerial Statement sets out aspirations, the Carolina Principles operationalise them across the "science and technology development lifecycle". The document is structured in three parts. The first, Advancing Discovery and Strengthening Technology Development, calls for sustained public investment in foundational research, blended public-private financing across technology readiness levels, and streamlined administrative processes for R&D funding. The second, Accelerating Validation and Commercialisation, is the most operationally specific section, endorsing regulatory sandboxes, results-based funding mechanisms, and innovation-orientated public procurement to help technologies cross the gap from laboratory to market. The third, Enabling Technology Adoption, is the section that has drawn the most political attention: it commits members to apply existing sector-specific regulatory frameworks to AI wherever possible and to reserve new rulemaking only for "novel considerations that existing legal frameworks cannot adequately address" as defined in The Carolina Principles for Emerging Technologies, 2026, Section III.

That last commitment is the crux of what commentary has called the U.S.'s "light-touch" pitch to the world. Rather than proposing a new international AI regulator, the Carolina Principles ask governments to extend the jurisdiction of existing sector regulators and  financial supervisors handling AI in finance and health authorities handling AI in medical devices and to treat novel, cross-cutting AI regulation as an exception rather than a default. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that all twenty G20 members, including China, endorsed the framework, calling it a product of "an enormous amount of work" given the divergent starting positions in the room. The timing was pointed: the framework was finalised roughly a month after the European Union's AI Act reached its most consequential enforcement milestone, with binding obligations for high-risk AI systems taking effect on August 2, 2026,  a contrast Elon Musk, participating in the ministerial, invoked directly in criticising EU-style regulation.

Reception: Consensus Inside, Scepticism Outside

Inside the Carolina Inn, the mood among industry leaders was buoyant. In a fireside conversation with Secretary Lutnick, OpenAI's Sam Altman described AI as "incredible magic of intelligence in a bottle" while warning that continued infrastructure build-out, more data centres, and more compute would be necessary to keep costs manageable. Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Palantir's Alex Karp offered similarly optimistic assessments, and Anthropic's participation in a voluntary model-testing arrangement with the U.S. government's safety and security institute was cited by OSTP Director Kratsios as evidence that industry-government cooperation, rather than statutory mandate, could deliver trustworthy AI.

Outside the security perimeter, several hundred demonstrators, like students, faculty, and local organisers,  gathered to protest what they characterised as an unaccountable alliance between government and AI capital, chanting slogans against both the technology's labour-market effects and the data centre buildout it requires. The juxtaposition captured a tension that runs beneath the consensus text itself: a framework designed to secure the broadest possible international agreement necessarily says less about how risks Labour displacement, energy demand, and algorithmic harm will be managed than it does about how innovation will be accelerated.

Conclusion

The Carolina Principles represent a coherent and, by G20 standards, unusually specific attempt to answer a question that has vexed multilateral technology governance for a decade: how do twenty economies with incompatible regulatory philosophies agree on anything regarding AI? The answer Chapel Hill produced was to agree on process rather than on substantive limits. Whether that process-based consensus proves durable will depend on what happens between now and the Miami Leaders' Summit in December, when heads of state, rather than ministers, will decide whether to elevate the Carolina Principles into the G20's broader economic agenda or treat them as a single ministerial's contribution to a much longer conversation.

References

1. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a996786f5b35599aec19180/g20-innovation-ministerial
2. https://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/2026-09/THE-CAROLINA-PRINCIPLES-FOR-EMERGING-TE
3. https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2026/09/g20-innovation-ministerial-concludes-conseNSUS statement
4. https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/09/g20-innovation-ministerial-concludes-with-consensus-sstatement/
5. https://www.state.gov/policy-issues/g20/feed/
6. https://g20.org/g20-united-states/
7. https://dailytarheel.com/480187/university/university-g20-event-1/
8. https://qz.com/g20-us-light-touch-ai-framework-chapel-hill-090326
9. https://explainx.ai/blog/g20-carolina-principles-ai-regulation-chapel-hill-2026
10. https://enterprisedna.co/resources/news/us-g20-carolina-principles-ai-regulation-enterprise-september-2026/
11. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/02/g20-innovation-ministerial-live-updates.html
12. https://fortune.com/2026/09/05/tech-ceos-ai-data-centers-g20-protests-sam-altman-nvidia-jensen-huang-palantir-alex-karp-chapel-hill-north-carolina-ai-backlash/
13. https://www.wunc.org/education/2026-09-02/protest-chapel-hill-unc-g20-innovation-technology-sam-a
14. https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-g20-presidency-narrow-agenda-2026

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Introduction

In India, the population of girls and adolescents is 253 million, as per the UNICEF report, and the sex ratio at birth is 929 per 1000 male children as of 2023. Cyberspace has massively influenced the daily aspects of our lives, and hence the safety aspect of cyberspace cannot be ignored any more. The social media platforms play a massive role in information dissemination and sharing. The data trail created by the use of such platforms is often used by cyber criminals to target innocent girls and children.

On Ground Stats

Of the six million crimes police in India recorded between 1 January and 31 December last year, 428,278 cases involved crimes against women. It’s a rise of 26.35% over six years – from 338,954 cases in 2016. A majority of the cases in 2021, the report said, were of kidnappings and abduction, rapes, domestic violence, dowry deaths and assaults. Also, 107 women were attacked with acid, 1,580 women were trafficked, 15 girls were sold, and 2,668 were victims of cybercrimes. With more than 56,000 cases, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which is India’s most populous with 240 million people, once again topped the list. Rajasthan followed it with 40,738 cases and Maharashtra with 39,526 cases. This shows the root of the problem and how deep this menace goes in our society. With various campaigns and initiatives by Government and the CSO, awareness is on the rise, but still, we need a robust prevention mechanism to address this issue critically.

Influence of Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were created to bring people closer by eliminating geographical boundaries, which is strengthened by the massive internet connectivity network across the globe. Throughout 2022, on average, there are about 470.1 million active social media users in India on a monthly basis, with an annual growth rate of 4.2 % in 2021-22. This represents about  33.4 % of the total population. These social media users, on average, spend about 2.6 hours on social media, and each, on average, has accounts on 8.6 platforms.

The bad actors have also upskilled themselves and are now using these social platforms to commit cybercrimes. Some of these crimes against girls and women include – Impersonation, Identity theft, Cyberstalking, Cyber-Enabled human trafficking and many more. These crimes are on the rise post-pandemic, and instances of people using fake IDs to lure young girls into their traps are being reported daily. One such instance is when Imran Mansoori created an Instagram account in the name of Rahul Gujjar, username: rahul_gujjar_9010. Using social engineering and scoping out the vulnerabilities, he trapped a minor girl in a relationship & took her to a hotel in Moradabad. The hotel manager raised the suspicion of seeing a different ID & called the Police, Imran was then arrested. But many such crimes go unreported, and it is essential for all stakeholders to create a safeguard regarding girls’ and women’s safety.

Legal Remedies at our disposal

The Indian Legal system has been evolving with time towards the online safety of girls and women. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and the National Commission for Women (NCW) have worked tirelessly to safeguard girls and women to create a wholesome, safe, secure environment. The Information Technology Act governs cyberspace and its associated rights and duties. The following provisions of the IT Act are focused towards safeguarding the rights –

• Violation of privacy – Section 66E
• Obscene material – Section 67
• Pornography & sexually explicit act – Section 67A
• Child pornography – Section 67B
• Intermediaries due diligence rules – Section 79

Apart from these provisions, acts like POCSO, IPC, and CrPC, draft the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, Intermediary Guidelines on Social Media and Online Gaming and telecommunications bill.

Conclusion

The likelihood of becoming a victim of cybercrime is always growing due to increased traffic in the virtual world, which is especially true for women who are frequently viewed as easy targets. The types of cyber crimes that target women have grown, and the trend has not stopped in India. Cyber flaming, cyber eve-teasing, cyber flirting, and internet cheating are some new-generation crimes that are worth mentioning here. In India, women tend to be reluctant to speak up about issues out of concern that doing so might damage their reputations permanently. Without being fully aware of the dangers of the internet, women grow more susceptible the more time they spend online. Women should be more alert to protect themselves from targeted online attacks.

Introduction

The Senate bill introduced on 19 March 2024 in the United States would require online platforms to obtain consumer consent before using their data for Artificial Intelligence (AI) model training. If a company fails to obtain this consent, it would be considered a deceptive or unfair practice and result in enforcement action from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under the AI consumer opt-in, notification standards, and ethical norms for training (AI Consent) bill. The legislation aims to strengthen consumer protection and give Americans the power to determine how their data is used by online platforms. 

The proposed bill also seeks to create standards for disclosures, including requiring platforms to provide instructions to consumers on how they can affirm or rescind their consent. The option to grant or revoke consent should be made available at any time through an accessible and easily navigable mechanism, and the selection to withhold or reverse consent must be at least as prominent as the option to accept while taking the same number of steps or fewer as the option to accept.

The AI Consent bill directs the FTC to implement regulations to improve transparency by requiring companies to disclose when the data of individuals will be used to train AI and receive consumer opt-in to this use. 
The bill also commissions an FTC report on the technical feasibility of de-identifying data, given the rapid advancements in AI technologies, evaluating potential measures companies could take to effectively de-identify user data.

The definition of ‘Artificial Intelligence System’ under the proposed bill

ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE SYSTEM- The term artificial intelligence system“ means a machine-based system that—

1. Is capable of influencing the environment by producing an output, including predictions, recommendations or decisions, for a given set of objectives; and
2. 2. Uses machine or human-based data and inputs to

(i) Perceive real or virtual environments;

(ii) Abstract these perceptions into models through analysis in an automated manner (such as by using machine learning) or manually; and

(iii) Use model inference to formulate options for outcomes.

Importance of the proposed AI Consent Bill USA

1. Consumer Data Protection: The AI Consent bill primarily upholds the privacy rights of an individual. Consent is necessitated from the consumer before data is used for AI Training; the bill aims to empower individuals with unhinged autonomy over the use of personal information. The scope of the bill aligns with the greater objective of data protection laws globally, stressing the criticality of privacy rights and autonomy.

2. Prohibition Measures: The proposed bill intends to prohibit covered entities from exploiting the data of consumers for training purposes without their consent. This prohibition extends to the sale of data, transfer to third parties and usage. Such measures aim to prevent data misuse and exploitation of personal information. The bill aims to ensure companies are leveraged by consumer information for the development of AI without a transparent process of consent.

3. Transparent Consent Procedures: The bill calls for clear and conspicuous disclosures to be provided by the companies for the intended use of consumer data for AI training. The entities must provide a comprehensive explanation of data processing and its implications for consumers. The transparency fostered by the proposed bill allows consumers to make sound decisions about their data and its management, hence nurturing a sense of accountability and trust in data-driven practices.

4. Regulatory Compliance: The bill's guidelines call for strict requirements for procuring the consent of an individual. The entities must follow a prescribed mechanism for content solicitation, making the process streamlined and accessible for consumers. Moreover, the acquisition of content must be independent, i.e. without terms of service and other contractual obligations. These provisions underscore the importance of active and informed consent in data processing activities, reinforcing the principles of data protection and privacy.

5. Enforcement and Oversight: To enforce compliance with the provisions of the bill, robust mechanisms for oversight and enforcement are established. Violations of the prescribed regulations are treated as unfair or deceptive acts under its provisions. Empowering regulatory bodies like the FTC to ensure adherence to data privacy standards. By holding covered entities accountable for compliance, the bill fosters a culture of accountability and responsibility in data handling practices, thereby enhancing consumer trust and confidence in the digital ecosystem.

Importance of Data Anonymization

Data Anonymization is the process of concealing or removing personal or private information from the data set to safeguard the privacy of the individual associated with it. Anonymised data is a sort of information sanitisation in which data anonymisation techniques encrypt or delete personally identifying information from datasets to protect data privacy of the subject. This reduces the danger of unintentional exposure during information transfer across borders and allows for easier assessment and analytics after anonymisation. When personal information is compromised, the organisation suffers not just a security breach but also a breach of confidence from the client or consumer. Such assaults can result in a wide range of privacy infractions, including breach of contract, discrimination, and identity theft.

The AI consent bill asks the FTC to study data de-identification methods. Data anonymisation is critical to improving privacy protection since it reduces the danger of re-identification and unauthorised access to personal information. Regulatory bodies can increase privacy safeguards and reduce privacy risks connected with data processing operations by investigating and perhaps implementing anonymisation procedures.

The AI consent bill emphasises de-identification methods, as well as the DPDP Act 2023 in India, while not specifically talking about data de-identification, but it emphasises the data minimisation principles, which highlights the potential future focus on data anonymisation processes or techniques in India.

Conclusion

The proposed AI Consent bill in the US represents a significant step towards enhancing consumer privacy rights and data protection in the context of AI development. Through its stringent prohibitions, transparent consent procedures, regulatory compliance measures, and robust enforcement mechanisms, the bill strives to strike a balance between fostering innovation in AI technologies while safeguarding the privacy and autonomy of individuals.

References:

• https://fedscoop.com/consumer-data-consent-training-ai-models-senate-bill/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20AI%20CONSENT%20Act%20gives,Welch%20said%20in%20a%20statement
• https://www.dataguidance.com/news/usa-bill-ai-consent-act-introduced-house#:~:text=USA%3A%20Bill%20for%20the%20AI%20Consent%20Act%20introduced%20to%20House%20of%20Representatives,-ConsentPrivacy%20Law&text=On%20March%2019%2C%202024%2C%20US,the%20U.S.%20House%20of%20Representatives
• https://datenrecht.ch/en/usa-ai-consent-act-vorgeschlagen/
• https://www.lujan.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/lujan-welch-introduce-billto-require-online-platforms-receive-consumers-consent-before-using-their-personal-data-to-train-ai-models/

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