The objective of the guide is to serve as a reference for safe enablement of AI within enterprises. The guide asks who bears the consequences when an AI agent acts and causes harm. It argues that no new legal regime is needed. Existing doctrines are largely enough, and the real gap is in applying them to agentic systems.
NATIONAL, 30 October 2026: Data Security Council of India (DSCI) today released an India focussed AI Liability Industry Guide for Agentic AI. The guide attempts to bring clarity to the primary question that when an AI agents act autonomously and something goes wrong, who bears the consequences. It offers a practical perspective on how liability, accountability and responsibility should be understood and may be allocated as enterprises adopt agentic AI.
The objective of the guide is to serve as a reference for safe enablement of AI within enterprises. It is a live discussion paper which will be updated time to time depending upon inputs received from various industry sectors.
Rather than proposing new standards, the guidance explains how established binding doctrines apply to autonomous, multi-vendor AI systems and maps where responsibility sits across the value chain that brings AI into use. It covers the domains of agentic AI, the forms of impact and risks these systems may create, and the factors that shape accountability. It also sets out why a proportionate, clearly allocated approach to governance, oversight, and liability matters for India, to guide the user industry while accelerating responsible AI adoption.
Key Highlights of the AI Liability Guidance
Vinayak Godse, CEO, DSCI, said, “The AI Liability Industry Guidance attempts to consolidate AI governance and safety conversations from principle to practice. For that shift to take hold, the discussion must reach the ground level, across every player in the AI value chain, from those who build models to those who deploy and use them. Secondly, intent alone is not enough. Organisations need clear decision spaces and instruments they can actually implement. Unless these are factored in across the value chain, conversations on liability will not turn into practical, sector-specific action. Lastly, AI brings conditions and risks we are not yet equipped to anticipate, and the framework must stay adaptive enough to deal with them as they emerge. DSCI looks forward to working with the government and industry to translate the liability guidance into actionable practice.”
The consultation is particularly relevant to end-user organisations, service providers and integrators, product companies and start-ups, tool and framework providers, and compute and intelligence providers.
Industry leaders, especially the C-suite, AI Officers, Gov Bodies, Research Think Tanks, Academic Institutions, Legal Bodies and CROs are encouraged to assess the guide against real world deployments and share feedback with DSCI on what strains, what is missing, and what does not hold.
