CPI(M) releases AI-generated video of Buddhadeb seeking support for left-wing candidates

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has released an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video of former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. It shows communist veterans urging people to vote for left-wing democratic secular candidates.

Mr. Bhattacharjee's two-minute video in Bengali was shared on the party's social media handles with the title, “Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's call to save the country and nation in the current political situation.”

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Observers say the use of AI to spread political messages is a turnaround for a political party that opposed computers when it was in power in the state. The CPI(M)-led Left Front ruled in West Bengal for 34 years from 1977 to 2011, until Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Nationalist Congress Party defeated the Left Front in the state. I was holding it.

In the video, the former CM referred to the Sandeshhari incident and said that injustice by the TMC cannot be tolerated and corruption is rampant in the country. The video shows Mr. Bhattacharjee commenting on corruption over electoral bonds and the Bharatiya Janata Party spewing communal hatred. The video is in line with Mr. Bhattacharjee's claim during his speech: “Eliminate the TMC to save the nation. Eliminate the TMC.” Defeat the BJP and save the country. ”

Newcomers, use of AI

Mr Bhattacharjee's last public appearance was at a public rally at the brigade training ground in February 2016. Since then, the former state chief minister has been confined to his home due to poor health. An audio recording of Mr. Bhattacharjee was also released in the 2021 assembly elections, in which he appealed to voters to vote for the Left Front candidate. However, this is the first time that the CPI(M) is utilizing AI.

Most of the Left Front's candidates in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections are student and youth newcomers to the party, and some are contesting assembly elections for the first time. His CPI(M) strategy for this election includes leveraging newcomers and AI.

During the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) has fielded 23 candidates. Its allies are the Revolutionary Socialist Party (three candidates), the All India Forward Bloc (two candidates), and the Communist Party of India (two candidates). The National Congress party, which has formed an electoral alliance, is contesting 12 seats in West Bengal in this election.

Sabyasachi Bandyopadhyay, a senior journalist who worked for a leading national newspaper in Kolkata, called the CPI(M)'s reliance on AI “ironic”. “From the 1980s through the decades of the 1990s, we have witnessed how his CPI(M) opposed automation and later the use of computers. “The party that takes advantage of it has come full circle,” he said.

Bandyopadhyay cites an anecdote in which Bhattacharjee admitted in the presence of Congress leader Jairam Ramesh during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government that resisting computerization was a mistake. At an event in Kolkata, Mr Bhattacharjee said the government was taking a “slow and steady” approach to introducing new technologies, to which Mr Ramesh said the country cannot be slow when it comes to introducing new technologies. Ta.