in the midst of suffocation On an April afternoon in Ajmer, India's Rajasthan state, local politician Shakti Singh Rathore sat in front of a green screen and shot a short video. He seemed nervous. It was the first time he had been cloned.
Wearing a crisp white shirt and a saffron ceremonial scarf emblazoned with the Bharatiya Janata Party's lotus flower, Rathore greeted the audience in Hindi with palms pressed together. “Namashkar,” he began. “To all my brothers–“
Before continuing filming, the cinematographer entered the frame. Divyendra Singh Jadun, a 31-year-old bald man with a thick black beard, told Mr. Rathore that she was moving too much in front of the camera. Mr. Jadun had enough audio and video data to create his AI deepfake of Mr. Rasool that would make his 300,000 potential voters around Ajmer believe they had private conversations with Mr. Rasool. I was trying to get , but excessive movement would break the algorithm. Jadoon told his subject to look straight at the camera and move only his lips. “Start over,” he said.
The world's largest democracy is now voting. With nearly a billion Indians eligible to vote as part of the general election, deepfakes could play a decisive and potentially divisive role. Political parties in India have misused AI to distort reality through cheap fake voices, propaganda images, and AI parodies. But while the global debate on deepfakes often focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other social harms, many Indian politicians are using the technology for another purpose: lobbying voters. uses technology.
Beyond ideology, they leverage AI to navigate the country's 22 official languages and thousands of regional dialects and deliver personalized messages to far-flung communities. The US recently made it illegal to use AI-generated audio for unsolicited phone calls, but in India, sanctioned deepfakes are a $60 million business opportunity. More than 50 million AI-generated voice clone calls were made in the two months leading up to the start of the April election, and millions more will be made during voting, one of the nation's largest business messaging operators said. company told “WIRED.''
Jadoun is a marquee player in this fast-growing industry. His company, Polymath Synthetic Media Solutions, is one of many deepfake service providers that have sprung up across India in response to the demands of the political class. So far this election season, Jadun has run five of his AI campaigns, for which his company has been paid a total of $55,000. (His fees are significantly lower than big political consultants, at Rs 125,000) [$1,500] Digital avatar creation, 60,000 rupees [$720] He created a deepfake of Prem Singh Tamang, chief minister of the Himalayan state of Sikkim, and the iconic politician YS Rajasekara, who died in a helicopter crash in 2009, to support his son YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. -Revived Lady. , currently the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Jadun also created AI-generated propaganda songs for several politicians, including local assembly candidate Tamang and the chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra. “He's our pride,” a Hindi song about a local politician in Ajmer belted out in male and female voices. “He was always fair.”
Jadun has also produced AI-generated campaign songs, including one for Ram Chandra Chaudhary, a local politician in Ajmer. The lyrics are translated into English as, “For Ajmer, he brought a new gift/His name is Ram Chandra/He helps everyone/He was the president of Ajmer Dairy/He always It was fair/He has Ram in his name/He is,” it reads. It is our pride / He is a Congress soldier / Shares the suffering of the nation / Son of Ajmer / Guardian of development / Son of Ajmer / The true form of development / Fighting for the rights of all. / Ram Chandra played the clarinet. ” Audio: Divyendra Singh Jadun
Rathore, who is not running in this year's elections, is one of more than 18 million BJP volunteers tasked with ensuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government maintains its grip on power. In the past, it would have spent months crisscrossing Rajasthan, a desert state roughly the size of Italy, talking to voters individually and offering the Bharatiya Janata Party various offers such as pensions, free tanks of cooking gas and cash. It would have been meant to remind them of how they have benefited from social programs such as Payments to pregnant women. But thanks to Jadoun's deepfakes, Rathore's job has become much easier.
He spends 15 minutes talking to the camera about key issues in the election, and Jadoon prompts him to ask questions. But what he says doesn't really matter. All Jadoon needs is Rathore's voice. Once that's done, Jadoun uses the data to generate videos and calls that are sent directly to voters' mobile phones. Instead of knocking on doors or giving quick handshakes at rallies, Mr. Rathore calls people by name, speaks with eerily specificity about the issues that matter most to them, and asks them to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party. you will see and hear. When they ask a question, the AI should answer in a clear, calm voice, much better than the real Rathore's fast-talking voice. Voters who are less tech-savvy may not even realize they are talking to a machine. Even Rasool admits he doesn't know much about AI. But he understands psychology. “Calls like this can help unstable voters.”
brush your shoulders Becoming a politician is nothing new for Jadoon. He used to be one of them. In 2015, he contested the Ajmer elections as the district president of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the youth wing of the Indian National Congress. The Indian National Congress, once a formidable national party, is now the main opposition party to Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
