Artificial intelligence is enabling India’s politicians to be everywhere at once in the world’s largest election by cloning their voices and digital likenesses. Even dead public figures, such as politician and actress Jayaram Jayalalithaa, are getting digitally resurrected to canvass support in what is shaping up to be the biggest test yet of democratic elections in the age of AI-generated deepfakes.
How will AIs like ChatGPT affect elections this year?
India’s nearly 970 million eligible voters started going to the polls on 19 April in a multi-phase process lasting until 1 June that will select the next government and prime minister. It has meant booming business for Divyendra Singh Jadoun, whose company The Indian Deepfaker typically uses AI techniques to create special effects for ad campaigns and Netflix productions.
His firm is handling more than a dozen election-related projects, including creating holographic avatars of politicians, using audio cloning and video deepfakes to enable personalised messaging en masse, and deploying a conversational AI agent that identifies itself as AI, but speaks in the voice of a political candidate during calls with voters.