TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 18—22 · FACTUAL · EVOLVING
What the law says today — and what is still forming
Law is local and moving, so a claim about it carries a place and a date.
The idea
There is no settled rulebook for AI in design practice, and there are real pieces. In India: the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, with the DPDP Rules, 2025, coming into force in phases; the AI Governance Guidelines of 5 November 2025, principle-based, seven guiding principles, and, as the Lab reads them, no umbrella AI statute; and a first, interim court ruling on training. In the EU: the AI Act, with obligations in force from 2 August 2026. Each settles something and leaves more open. Know which exist, what each says, how to check; never invent what is in one.
Why it matters
"An AI law requires X" is now a sentence that can be true, false, or true only somewhere else. A designer who can say which, and give the source, is useful in the room. "The law requires X", said without a source, is how a studio talks itself into a bad decision. So is "there's no law, so anything goes."
See it in the studio
A client in Bengaluru asks whether using an image model on their project photographs is "allowed under the AI law", and whether the generated views in the brochure must be labelled. The honest reply has four parts. India has no AI Act; its Governance Guidelines are principles, not a statute. India's data-protection law governs any personal data in those photographs. The copyright question is before the courts, with one interim ruling and no final answer. And in the EU, since 2 August 2026, certain AI-generated content must be marked — so a brochure that travels should say what its images are, and should say so anyway, because honesty does not wait for a law.
Watch for this
A confident sentence about AI law with no date and no place attached. Law is local, and it is moving. A claim without a "where" and a "when" is not a claim about law — and the card you are reading carries a checked date for the same reason.
Try it
Find the primary text of one piece — the DPDP Act and its Rules, the AI Governance Guidelines, the EU AI Act's Article 50. Read the definitions section only. Write three lines: what it covers, where it applies, and one thing it does not address. Then write one way you would find out if it changed.
Prove it
State, with sources, what AI-related law exists in one jurisdiction and what remains unsettled there, and say which of your own working habits it actually touches. Then explain why "an AI law requires X" without a primary source is a mistake.
How it works
The law comes in layers. General laws — copyright, contract, privacy — apply to AI because they apply to everything. Then sector rules. Then AI-specific statutes, of which the EU's is the most complete so far. The dated layer, as of this edition: India's DPDP Act received assent on 11 August 2023; the DPDP Rules were notified in November 2025 and the provisions are being commenced in phases, the children's-data provisions scheduled for May 2027. MeitY published the India AI Governance Guidelines on 5 November 2025 — seven guiding principles, six pillars, a sector-by-sector approach; the Lab's reading is that they rely on existing law rather than creating a new statute, and that reading is ours, not the ministry's. On 24 July 2026 the Delhi High Court gave an interim — not final — ruling in ANI v OpenAI, treating training on news articles as prima facie fair dealing on the facts before it; the suit continues. A December 2025 DPIIT working paper proposed a mandatory licence for training; it is a proposal, not law. In the EU, the AI Act's Article 50 transparency duties apply from 2 August 2026. UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation is not law, but 193 states adopted it, India among them, and national frameworks lean on it. Every sentence in this paragraph will need re-checking by the next edition, which is why the card is EVOLVING and why it carries a checked date. Read the primary text; do not cite a card about it.
What this idea builds on
What this idea opens up
Sources
Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.