India’s privacy laws may not be ready for in-home physical AI
India’s privacy laws may not be ready for in-home physical AI
Publish Date: 2026-05-28 20:30:00
Source Domain: m.economictimes.com
India’s privacy laws, built largely around conventional personal data processing, may not be equipped to regulate continuously learning artificial intelligence systems operating inside homes, legal experts warn, noting such systems could retain or memorise behavioural insights even after raw data is erased.
The concerns gained urgency after controversy around startup Pronto’s in-home recording pilot sparked wider questions over how “physical AI” systems may learn from people’s routines, conversations, movement patterns and behaviour inside private spaces.
While India’s privacy laws are largely built around conventional personal data processing, lawyers said the new regulatory challenge goes beyond collection or deletion of recordings because AI memory may retain behavioural intelligence, predictive insights and model improvements derived from such interactions.
“The concern is not merely surveillance in the traditional sense, but the gradual creation of highly sophisticated behavioural ecosystems capable of mapping routines, habits, preferences, conversations and emotional patterns,” said Hardeep Sachdeva, partner at AZB & Partners.
Unlike traditional AI models trained largely on internet data, physical AI systems learn from real-world human activity and interactions. As companies increasingly look for such behavioural data to train AI models, lawyers point to legal grey areas around surveillance, profiling, consent and AI memory.
“The real legal complexity lies in the fact that even if raw recordings are deleted, the AI system may continue to retain behavioural patterns, spatial intelligence, predictive insights and model improvements extracted from that data,” Sachdeva said. “Current law does not clearly distinguish between deletion of raw data and retention of intelligence derived from it.”
Supratim Chakraborty, partner at Khaitan & Co, said while India does not yet have a standalone law specifically governing AI systems, existing legal…
