Himanshu Sharma\/picture alliance via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBut, despite fears of widespread disinformation, for the most part the campaigns, candidates and activists used AI constructively in the election. They used AI for typical political activities, including mudslinging, but primarily to better connect with voters.<\/span><\/p>\nDeepfakes without the deception<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nPolitical parties in India spent an estimated US$50 million on authorized AI-generated content for targeted communication with their constituencies this election cycle. And it was largely successful.<\/span><\/p>\nIndian political strategists have long recognized the influence of personality and emotion on their constituents, and they started using AI to bolster their messaging. Young and upcoming AI companies like The Indian Deepfaker, which started out serving the entertainment industry, quickly responded to this growing demand for AI-generated campaign material.<\/span><\/p>\nIn January, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, former chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu for two decades, appeared via video at his party\u2019s youth wing conference. He wore his signature yellow scarf, white shirt, dark glasses and had his familiar stance \u2013 head slightly bent sideways. But Karunanidhi died in 2018. His party authorized the deepfake.<\/span><\/p>\nIn February, the All-India Anna Dravidian Progressive Federation party\u2019s official X account posted an audio clip of Jayaram Jayalalithaa, the iconic superstar of Tamil politics colloquially called \u201cAmma\u201d or \u201cMother.\u201d Jayalalithaa died in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\nMeanwhile, voters received calls from their local representatives to discuss local issues \u2013 except the leader on the other end of the phone was an AI impersonation. Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) workers like Shakti Singh Rathore have been frequenting AI startups to send personalized videos to specific voters about the government benefits they received and asking for their vote over WhatsApp.<\/span><\/p>\nMultilingual boost<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nDeepfakes were not the only manifestation of AI in the Indian elections. Long before the election began, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a tightly packed crowd celebrating links between the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of India and the city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Instructing his audience to put on earphones, Modi proudly announced the launch of his \u201cnew AI technology\u201d as his Hindi speech was translated to Tamil in real time.<\/span><\/p>\nIn a country with 22 official languages and almost 780 unofficial recorded languages, the BJP adopted AI tools to make Modi\u2019s personality accessible to voters in regions where Hindi is not easily understood. Since 2022, Modi and his BJP have been using the AI-powered tool Bhashini, embedded in the NaMo mobile app, to translate Modi\u2019s speeches with voiceovers in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi.<\/span><\/p>\nAs part of their demos, some AI companies circulated their own viral versions of Modi\u2019s famous monthly radio show \u201cMann Ki Baat,\u201d which loosely translates to \u201cFrom the Heart,\u201d which they voice cloned to regional languages.<\/span><\/p>\nAdversarial uses<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIndian political parties doubled down on online trolling, using AI to augment their ongoing meme wars. Early in the election season, the Indian National Congress released a short clip to its 6 million followers on Instagram, taking the title track from a new Hindi music album named \u201cChor\u201d (thief). The video grafted Modi\u2019s digital likeness onto the lead singer and cloned his voice with reworked lyrics critiquing his close ties to Indian business tycoons.<\/span><\/p>\nThe BJP retaliated with its own video, on its 7-million-follower Instagram account, featuring a supercut of Modi campaigning on the streets, mixed with clips of his supporters but set to unique music. It was an old patriotic Hindi song sung by famous singer Mahendra Kapoor, who passed away in 2008 but was resurrected with AI voice cloning.<\/span><\/p>\nModi himself quote-tweeted an AI-created video of him dancing \u2013 a common meme that alters footage of rapper Lil Yachty on stage \u2013 commenting \u201csuch creativity in peak poll season is truly a delight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIn some cases, the violent rhetoric in Modi\u2019s campaign that put Muslims at risk and incited violence was conveyed using generative AI tools, but the harm can be traced back to the hateful rhetoric itself and not necessarily the AI tools used to spread it.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Indian experience<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIndia is an early adopter, and the country\u2019s experiments with AI serve as an illustration of what the rest of the world can expect in future elections. The technology\u2019s ability to produce nonconsensual deepfakes of anyone can make it harder to tell truth from fiction, but its consensual uses are likely to make democracy more accessible.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Indian election\u2019s embrace of AI that began with entertainment, political meme wars, emotional appeals to people, resurrected politicians and persuasion through personalized phone calls to voters has opened a pathway for the role of AI in participatory democracy.<\/span><\/p>\nThe surprise outcome of the election, with the BJP\u2019s failure to win its predicted parliamentary majority, and India\u2019s return to a deeply competitive political system especially highlights the possibility for AI to have a positive role in deliberative democracy and representative governance.<\/span><\/p>\nLessons for the world\u2019s democracies<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s a goal of any political party or candidate in a democracy to have more targeted touch points with their constituents. The Indian elections have shown a unique attempt at using AI for more individualized communication across linguistically and ethnically diverse constituencies, and making their messages more accessible, especially to rural, low-income populations.<\/span><\/p>\nAI and the future of participatory democracy could make constituent communication not just personalized but also a dialogue, so voters can share their demands and experiences directly with their representatives \u2013 at speed and scale.<\/span><\/p>\nIndia can be an example of taking its recent fluency in AI-assisted party-to-people communications and moving it beyond politics. The government is already using these platforms to provide government services to citizens in their native languages.<\/span><\/p>\nIf used safely and ethically, this technology could be an opportunity for a new era in representative governance, especially for the needs and experiences of people in rural areas to reach Parliament.<\/span><\/p>\nVandinika Shukla<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Fellow, Practicing Democracy Project,
\nHarvard Kennedy School<\/p>\nBruce Schneier<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy,
\nHarvard Kennedy School<\/p>\n
\nMauritius Times ePaper Friday 14 June 2024<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Vandinika Shukla & Bruce Schneier<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":40616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8348],"tags":[46458,30635,44988,216,19557,165,11799],"class_list":["post-40615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-conversation","tag-2024-indian","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-deepfakes","tag-democracy","tag-disinformation","tag-india","tag-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Indian-AI.jpg?fit=1200%2C799&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-az5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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