Deepfakes and Indian elections: A case of much ado about nothing
As the age of AI dawns upon us, it has brought excitement and trepidation in equal measure. The trepidation was mostly around AI-generated deepfakes and how they could change voter minds, influence elections and thus subvert democracy. This was especially true in India, as almost a billion voters were electing a new government.
Many other countries due for polling, including the US and UK, confront similar fears. While India is a developing economy, it has a digitally- and social media-savvy population. Political parties, too, have large IT and social media wings.
Deepfakes are not new, with AI technologies like Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) churning them out since 2011. However, the advent of GenAI and the ubiquity of social media have made their creation, quality and spread at scale much cheaper and easier. This explains the concerns expressed by civil society, governments and media.
In a few articles and comments on AI and deepfakes, I had taken a contrarian stance, arguing that AI, if used well, could help the electoral process and democracy. It can help detect fraud, optimize the complex logistics of booth and voter management, and build resource and cost efficiencies into the vast machinery of Indian elections. GenAI can be used for politicians to reach out to voters in a more personalized and scalable manner, level the playing field, and make voting access for the differently-abled voters easier.
Most, however, tended to focus on the negatives and the supposed havoc that GenAI could wreak on Indian elections. Now that Lok Sabha polling is over, it seems to be much ado about nothing. A post facto analysis done by two Harvard Kennedy School scholars Vandinika Shukla and Bruce Schneier (bit.ly/4er8ISi)
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