India to Use AI For Machine-Readable Standards: Consumer Affairs Secretary

• The Consumer Affairs Ministry is planning machine-readable, SMART standards using AI.

• The goal is to reduce compliance burden and enable automatic verification.

• BIS is moving from regulator to facilitator, with private testing infrastructure being promoted.

The Consumer Affairs Ministry is planning to develop machine-readable, SMART standards using artificial intelligence tools to reduce compliance burden on industry, a senior official said on Thursday.

Machine-readable standards translate regulatory requirements into structured digital rules that computer systems can process directly, enabling automatic compliance verification without manual intervention.

SMART (Standard Machine Accessible, Readable and Transferable) formats go a step further by being dynamic, constantly updated and integrated into software and manufacturing lifecycles.

Addressing a FICCI-organised event here, Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare said the department was looking at ways to leverage emerging technologies, particularly AI, to modernise the country's standards ecosystem.

"We also understand that the emerging technologies which are coming up in a big way, especially the AI, it may be creating a lot of disruption, and it could be creating more challenges. But we need to understand how to use it to our advantage," she said.

Khare said India stood at a "transformative moment" in its economic journey and that quality would be central to achieving the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047.

She also said the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) was evolving from a regulator to a facilitator, with the government promoting private sector testing infrastructure to support industrial expansion while maintaining consumer trust.

The secretary called on industry to actively participate in standards formulation and said the government was in the process of replacing obsolete testing methods with quicker and more accurate processes.

"Quality is not just a pathway to development, it is also a destination in itself," she added.