India, July 13 -- A department under the IT ministry (MeitY) has reportedly asked central ministries to hold off on deploying AI models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic for cybersecurity and related functions.

The direction came after representatives of the two US-based AI companies approached several ministries with proposals to deploy their models, ThePrint reported, citing an office memorandum.

It remains unclear how many ministries were approached or at what level the meetings took place.

According to the report, the memorandum does not permanently bar the use of the models. Instead, the department has questioned the timing of their deployment and warned against putting such systems to use prematurely.

Among the ministries approa...