Bangalore, India – On January 23, M. Karunanidhi, an icon of Indian cinema and politics, appeared in front of a live audience on a large screen and released the autobiographical book of his 82-year-old friend and fellow politician TR Bahl. Congratulations on the release.
Wearing her trademark black sunglasses, a white shirt and a yellow shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Karunanidhi’s look was spot on. In an eight-minute speech, the veteran poet-turned-politician congratulated the book’s author and passionately praised the capable leadership of his son and current national leader, MK Stalin. I admired it.
Mr. Karunanidhi passed away in 2018. It was the third time in the past six months that the iconic leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Party (DMK) was revived using artificial intelligence (AI) for such a public function.
“When the coronavirus pandemic hit the world, our chief minister ran in the direction of the panicked voices of the people,” Karunanidhi said. “The people know and I know how you fought to save the lives of the people.”
“The market is opening up,” Senthil Nayagam, founder of AI media technology company Muonium, which created the deepfake Karunanidhi video, told Al Jazeera. [for such deepfakes]…. You can attribute some statements to specific people, which gives more value to them. ”
AI Karunanidhi’s first public appearance was at a local media event in September last year, followed by other campaign events for party workers. The resurgent leader often praises party officials, especially the leadership of his son MK Stalin – the aim is to increase his popularity.
At a book launch in January, AI Karunanidhi detailed everything from student loan forgiveness and cash gifts to the poor to women-friendly policies and investment ropes. This is a list of his son’s accomplishments over the years that have moved the nation forward.
Mr. Karunanidhi last gave a public interview in 2016, before which time his voice had become rough and he looked frail. Mr. Nayagam used Mr. Karunanidhi’s public data to train a voice model to recreate the leader he looked like when Mr. Karunanidhi was younger in the 1990s. He said a pre-recorded script for the AI speech was provided by local DMK cadres and vetted by party officials.
TR Bahl, whose team approved the development of AI Karunanidhi, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Karunanidhi is one of India’s longest-serving parliamentarians, ruling the state of Tamil Nadu for nearly 20 years and serving as chief minister for a total of five terms. The poet-turned-politician has written scripts about the emancipation of lower castes and remains influential among older voters.
According to local media reports, the response to these AI videos has prompted the DMK party leadership to consider creating a campaign speech for AI Karunanidhi in the upcoming 2024 assembly election campaign.
ethical and legal issues
Even as policymakers assess the types of AI communications that should be regulated, one political party has used AI to revive political stalwarts of yesteryear and elevate today’s leaders.
But this also raises thorny ethical and legal questions. “It’s one thing to use AI to create synthetic audio and video from a living human being consenting to the content. It’s quite another to bring a dead person back to life and attribute an opinion to that person. Amber Sinha, Trustworthy AI Senior Researcher at the Mozilla Foundation.
But the genie is already out of the bottle. Outbound voice calls and SMS, avatar creation, personalized media outreach, AI-generated multilingual creative on social media, etc., said Dighaji Mogra, director at Jarvis Consulting, one of India’s largest political consulting firms. , AI-powered content marketing for election campaigns represents an estimated $60 million market opportunity in India this election year.
“In Tamil Nadu, there are no more strong leaders of the parties,” Nayagam said, citing former actors-turned-politicians Jayalalithaa, MG Ramachandran and Vijayakanth as examples. Nayagam said he has been in touch with several junior officials across party lines who are interested in using AI for similar deepfakes.
He said interest in such applications increased after his company shared a four-minute audio clip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Mann Ki Baat program on X in September last year, which was reproduced in eight languages. he said. These interesting inquiries gave Nayagam and other consultants an idea of his business opportunities in AI elections.
More than 60 countries around the world are scheduled to hold national elections in 2024, and the potential for artificial intelligence to be misused to influence public opinion has sparked a moral panic and become an issue of global attention. .
Ahead of Indonesia’s presidential election, Prabowo Subianto, a former military general accused of atrocities against pro-democracy activists, used generative AI to recreate himself as a chubby-cheeked AI avatar to attract younger voters. I am trying to do.
The use of AI for election campaigns and abuses has become more prominent in South Asia. In Bangladesh, pro-government accounts are using deepfakes to target opposition parties. In Pakistan, former Prime Minister Imran Khan campaigns from inside his cell by passing written notes to his lawyer, which are converted into AI voice speeches using software from US-based startup Eleven Labs. has been done.
“The ad hoc use of AI in campaigns appears to be taking off in a big way in South Asia,” said the Mozilla Foundation’s Sinha.
On January 21, the DMK party held its second annual youth wing conference in the temple town of Salem. The mega event, held at an open arena, attracted 500,000 supporters and marked the formal launch of the DMK’s 2024 election campaign. Party leaders gave impassioned speeches challenging the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and criticized the party’s policies, including the weakening of state power by the BJP-dominated moderates.
In this campaign, AI Karunanidhi reappeared in a surprise video. Elaborating on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s continued hostility towards Tamil Nadu, Mr. Karunanidhi said, “The rights of many battleground states were lost in the 10 years of Bharatiya Janata Party rule.”
The three-minute video speech, accompanied by moving music, ends with AI Karunanidhi calling for stronger states’ rights and encouraging young leaders to fight for the future of democracy.
“This was created by the party’s digital media wing to encourage and enthuse the cadre,” DMK spokesperson Dharanidharan Selvam told Al Jazeera. “I think the executives were definitely fired up and excited.”
Sumanth Raman, a Chennai-based political commentator, said it is fashionable for deceased leaders to campaign for politics because they “continue to be more popular than living leaders.” “Currently, there is no mass leader in Tamil Nadu like Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi, another political star.”
Over the past three decades, more than six political parties have been established by actors in the state. Raman said many leaders come from the world of cinema, where they play larger-than-life characters and have always been looked down upon by people.
“But that’s something that will be adjusted as we move into the next generation, and that’s where we are now. It doesn’t have that big of an aura,” he said.
“Taking advantage of the popularity of the deceased”
The impact the revived iconic leader will have on viewers remains to be seen. “I think this was a very normal initiative. It was given to their party members and they finished it,” Raman said of the AI video speech. “Today’s AI can create even better images.”
As for the book launch video, it’s clear that the video is a composite since the lip sync doesn’t match perfectly. Still, Karunanidhi’s voice reflects reality.
Nayagam, the developer of AI Karunanidhi, said one of the reasons for the incomplete visuals was the unavailability of high-quality video datasets, so he was forced to source whatever was available on the internet. I said that it is.
The video shown at the youth conference was better, but inconsistent near the mouth. Still, the reaction to the video from online viewers was positive, with some commenting on YouTube that it was “super.” Both videos were clearly labeled as being generated by AI.
India experienced its first deep-fake video in 2020, when Bharatiya Janata Party politician Manoj Tiwari authorized the creation and distribution of a deepfake video of him campaigning in Haryanvi, a language he does not speak, and English. I’ve seen fakes used in election campaigns. Experts condemned the video, saying it was manipulated by AI because it was shared privately.
Some argue that the creation of AI videos of politicians is an extension of the use of photographs and images of the dead by political parties, such as the use of posthumous images of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi by Indians. Sinha said there may be. National Assembly.
“But creating synthetic audio and video goes a few steps further,” says Sinha. “In both cases, the party is trying to capitalize on the popularity of the dead, but in the latter case the opinions and messages are actively attributed to the dead.”
A further difficult issue when resurrecting a deceased politician is, “Who has the voice and image rights of the deceased?”
“Of course, there is no legal basis for this as there is no right to honor the deceased in India, but from an ethical point of view, consent needs to be taken into account,” Devika Malik said. The Delhi-based technology policy consultant focuses on online trust and safety. Indian law provides legal protection against defamation of the dead.
Politicians in India are also actively exploring AI solutions for their upcoming election campaigns. Jarvis Consulting’s Mole says individual candidates are using AI voice clones to push outbound robocalls and IVRS (Intended Voice Response Systems) that include a recorded voice and personalized name in the message. He said there was. “There are multiple vendors running around the country doing this and selling this for a very nominal fee,” Mogura said.
There is already a burgeoning synthetic media economy, with actors and CEOs allowed to use deepfakes, and the market is expanding into the political realm. Consultancies such as Polymath Solutions, run by Devendra Singh Jadun, use voice cloning to deliver “personalized messages” from politicians to party workers in the field.
“It’s going to be used in a big way in this election,” Mole said. However, “it’s a double-edged sword. It’s going to create a lot of misinformation and disinformation. I think it’s going to reduce benefits and increase the problem of misinformation and disinformation and all that.”
From a social impact perspective, it remains unclear to what extent these AI videos, even crude ones, can shape voter attitudes.
Even if such videos are not of high quality, “in the case of popular past speakers like M. Karunanidhi, it can lead to the message getting more attention, which helps it go viral.” “It’s possible,” Sinha said.
His latest research highlights how “spread actors,” or political consultants, work with campaigns to spread messages, despite not being affiliated with a political party.
Leveraging emotional appeals from certain powerful figures or family members, especially when personalized and sent on WhatsApp, can be an effective communication strategy and can sway voters. added Malik.
However, policy advocates and practitioners are largely divided on the effectiveness of synthetic media.
Jarvis’ Mr. Mole predicts that the novelty of AI-based personalized messages from politicians, whether audio or video, will soon wear off. “If people start seeing it more often, they’ll realize it’s happening everywhere and they’re seeing it everywhere, just like what happened with WhatsApp,” he says.
Previously, political parties placed particular emphasis on creating WhatsApp groups for support. Now everyone knows that each person belongs to hundreds of groups, and no one pays much attention or reads all the chats.
“I think with these generative AI solutions and use cases, we will be facing similar problems at a much faster rate,” Mogra said.
