The inexorable integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with cybersecurity infractions has laid bare profound lacunae in the regulatory edifice enshrined under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act)^[1]. This dissertation undertakes a doctrinal and empirical scrutiny of the legislative inadequacies in circumscribing AI-enabled cybersecurity menaces, with particular emphasis on the aggravated incidence of phishing contraventions during the period 2024-2025. Phishing, metamorphosed through AI instrumentalities such as deepfake artefacts, generative adversarial networks, and algorithmic social engineering, evinces a dissonance with the IT Act's antiquated provisions, inter alia Sections 43, 66, 66D, and the now-expunged Section 66A. Predicated upon CERT-In advisories and National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)^[2] compendia documenting a 150% augmentation in phishing cognizances from 2023 to 2025, the inquiry elucidates the paucity of AI-tailored nomenclatures, vicarious liability paradigms for AI progenitors, and compulsive ethical probity audits, thereby vitiating prosecutorial efficacy.

A cardinal infirmity resides in the IT Act's techno-agnostic conspectus, antecedent to contemporaneous AI architectures encompassing machine learning and vast parametric reservoirs. Section 43A, mandating "reasonable security practices" for sensitive personal data, proscribes perspicuity vis-à-vis AI-orchestrated phishing, exemplified by phoneme-cloned impostures or hyper-granular assaults leveraging exfiltrated sociometric intelligence. The 2024-2025 phishing efflorescence manifest in emblematic precedents like AI-abetted impostures upon UPSC supplicants and pecuniary institutions (vide RBI circulars) bespeaks adjudicative impediments: retarded CERT-In intimation pursuant to Section 70B, attenuated intermediary safe harbours under Section 79, and the absenation of preemptive AI peril valuations. Juxtaposed against supranational precedents, including the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act, 2024^[3] (classificatory high-risk impositions) and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, India's retardance is accentuated, notwithstanding the Digital