Previous elections were no stranger to hate speech and disinformation campaigns, but the technology that enables this ecosystem has revolutionised at warp speed. That, along with AI-generated content, presents new challenges to India’s voters in 2024.
By SAHANA VENUGOPAL, SAUMYA KALIA
Election season calls for a game of Real or Fake.
Take this pithy declaration in WhatsApp circulation from 2019, ahead of India’s General Elections: UNESCO Declare India’s “Jana Gana Mana” the World’s Best National Anthem. By now, ‘UNESCO declares India’ anything is a recognisable template; the forward holds celebrity status on the misinformation runway.
Try another. In a recent YouTube short, Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes to life. He speaks about freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Hindi, before continuing his speech in three other languages. His lip movements are in sync, the timbre of his voice maintained. The short has 190 views. Real or fake? A bit of both.
This election season, misinformation has a new face. This time, it smiles, talks and woos the Indian voter with an ingenuity that is hard to detect and harder to regulate. Mr. Modi’s almost believable speech is a peek into the wide and sweeping force of generative AI to disrupt the largest election season in history.
The 2019 elections were no stranger to hate speech and disinformation campaigns, but the technology that enables this ecosystem has revolutionised at warp speed. The impulse to deceive has found a newer, more eager outlet in the last five years.
If 2019 polls were dubbed the ‘social media elections’, 2024 stands witness to the alarming age of AI elections.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com. Read the full story here.
