Parental Responsibility For A Minor's Ai-Generated Defamatory Content: Testing The "Knew Or Ought To Have Known" Standard Under Indian Law

Abstract

This paper examines whether existing Indian tort and defamation principles can adequately determine parental responsibility when a minor uses generative artificial intelligence to create or disseminate defamatory content, particularly where the parent had no realistic opportunity to detect the conduct. Indian law does not make parents automatically liable for the torts of their children; responsibility depends on an independent showing of parental fault, ordinarily negligent supervision, judged by whether the parent knew or ought reasonably to have known of the risk. The paper tests this standard against six constructed factual scenarios and argues that generative artificial intelligence does not defeat the standard as such, but sharply increases the incidence of genuinely undetectable harm, a condition the paper terms digital invisibility. Where such invisibility is real, the paper argues that responsibility is more defensibly located in the due diligence obligations recently imposed on intermediaries handling synthetically generated information, and in an as yet undeveloped Indian conception of generative AI developer responsibility, than in any expansion of parental fault. Drawing on a comparative examination of France, Mauritius, and the United Kingdom, the paper proposes a judicially administrable "reasonable digital supervision" standard for Indian courts, evaluated against four alternative reform options.