India election: AI deepfakes of Bollywood stars backing political parties swirl as voters grapple with information overload

Popular stars Aamir Khan and Ranbir Kapoor were pictured saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to keep campaign promises and address critical economic issues during his two terms.

The clips end with the opposition Congress election symbol and slogan: “Vote for Justice, Vote for Congress”.

The celebrities, however, have denied involvement in the videos that experts say put a great burden on the Indian public to discern fact from fiction, in a society where opinion could be easily influenced by cult culture among those untrained in critical thinking.

Another entertainer, Ranveer Singh, was also shown in a clip endorsing a political party.

Indian fact-checking platform BOOM analysed Singh’s video using itisaar, a deepfake detection tool developed by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, determining the content contained an AI voice clone.

“Keeping in mind how disinformation is already one of the biggest issues the country is facing, the introduction of AI-led disinformation worsens an already bad situation significantly,” said Archis Chowdhury, a senior fact-checker and correspondent at BOOM.

Namrata Maheshwari, senior policy counsel at Access Now, a global digital rights organisation, said the exploitation or fraudulent use of any person’s identity should be taken seriously.

“During sensitive periods such as elections, the need to identify such misuse and take steps to rectify and prevent it is even more urgent,” Maheshwari told This Week in Asia.

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“Political parties should not use any harmful misinformation or disinformation in their campaigns, regardless of whether it is AI-generated,” she said.

Maheshwari said people are also inundated with