Is a blessing or a curse? , AI is popular in this year’s Indian election, digital man “Modi” canvasses votes, dances with Modi | AI | canvasses votes

As the general election voting enters a critical stage, a video of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dance generated by artificial intelligence technology has gone viral on social networks recently, adding to Modi's high popularity and showing the role of AI in this year's Indian election. The heat continues unabated.

This year’s Indian general election is called the country’s first “AI election.” AI technology has been widely used in election campaigns and is even considered to be reshaping India’s electoral ecology.

However, during the election process, the misuse of AI also led to chaos and posed huge regulatory challenges to the Modi government.

In an AI-generated video uploaded to social media X, "Modi" dances to a dynamic Bengali song.

Modi himself was clearly pleasantly surprised. He retweeted the video on X's personal account and left a message saying: "Like all of you, I also like to watch myself dance. It's so happy to see such creativity during the peak voting period!"

Some netizens praised Modi as "the coolest prime minister in India's history."

Coincidentally, last week, an AI-generated dance video of Indian strongwoman and West Bengal Chief Minister Banerjee also became popular on the Internet.

Both Modi and Banerjee's dance videos were produced using the free website Viggle. The production process is very simple, you only need a photo and follow the basic tips of the tutorial to generate a video in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, the virality of the video is staggering. On social media X, the "Modi" dance video has been viewed more than 10 million times.

These are just the latest “watermarks” of AI technology “infiltrating” this year’s Indian election.

India’s lower house of parliament election is called the country’s first “AI election.”

From generating digital human campaign videos and personalized audio messages to “cloning” candidates’ voices to make phone calls to voters, AI technology is believed to be reshaping the way elections are conducted and campaigned in India.

For example, an AI-generated video of "Modi" canvassing votes gave Indian voters a new experience.

In the video, the digital man "Modi" can actually call out the names of voters watching the video.

For another example, Modi himself can use the officially created AI translation tool Bhashini to translate a speech in Hindi into dozens of Indian native languages ​​such as Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, and Punjabi in real time.

At the same time, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party sent a large number of AI-generated canvassing videos through the instant messaging software WhatsApp.

In these videos, members of the Indian Party appear as digital figures to promote Modi’s people-friendly policies to voters.

Through AI technology, some political parties have also "resurrected" late influential party founders or pioneers in order to canvass votes. For example, in southern India, a Congress leader used AI technology to create a 2-minute video that reproduced the voice and smile of his late politician father to evoke the memory of voters.

Compared with traditional methods such as campaign rallies and door-to-door canvassing, new campaign methods powered by AI achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Jia Dun, founder of an AI startup that produces campaign materials and products, said his team can produce 10,000 AI videos per day. “What used to take seven or eight days can now be done in three minutes.”

According to experts, AI can also reduce communication costs and improve polling efficiency.

Vishnoi, an Indian political activist and communications expert, said that in the past, political parties relied on call centers staffed by staff and volunteers, or utilized interactive voice response systems for propaganda. Today, with the help of AI technology to communicate and interact with voters, costs can be reduced by up to 50 times. In terms of polling, “surveys that traditionally took months can now be completed in a day.”

Deshpande, technical director of Rajneeti Political Management Consulting, pointed out that the massive expansion of content production and the shift to digital communication highlight revolutionary changes in the way political information is delivered, and also marks a new era in electoral strategy.

However, while AI has become a weapon in the election campaign, its ability to fake fake news is also interfering with the world's largest election.

Last month, news about the misuse of AI frequently made headlines in the Indian media, fully demonstrating the negative energy released by AI in elections.

In two fake AI-generated videos, two well-known Indian Bollywood actors lashed out at Modi and called on Indians to vote for the opposition Congress Party.

The two actors stated that they did not authorize the production of the relevant videos. Both videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media.

Two senior officials in the Modi government also encountered the embarrassment of fake AI videos.

Among them, a fake video showed Indian Home Minister Shah talking about a sensitive issue. He said the BJP would stop some social security for minorities. Concerned that the video might have an impact on the election, Shah quickly refuted the rumors.

Vishnoi said that India is already facing a huge risk of false and misinformation, and with artificial intelligence, this information can spread 100 times faster.

According to a survey released by the World Economic Forum in January, disinformation will pose a higher risk to India over the next two years than infectious diseases or illegal economic activities.

In fact, the misuse of AI has not only created electoral chaos, but also intensified party strife in India.

In response to the fake video of two government officials being "recruited", the Indian police arrested 9 people, 6 of whom were members of the Congress Party. The Congress Party condemned the Modi government's "authoritarian abuse of power."

Since the launch of the election campaign, the ruling Indian People's Party and the opposition Congress Party have been accusing each other of using AI to deepfakes election-related content and spreading it widely online.

At the same time, the two parties also use AI as a weapon to attack each other. For example, the Congress Party previously posted an AI-generated video imitating Modi on its photo wall, mocking Modi for investing a large amount of resources in business tycoons.

Some analysts are worried that some politicians can use AI technology to manipulate public opinion during the election campaign.

Faced with the problem of misuse of AI deep fakes, how to effectively supervise it is a big challenge.

India has nearly 1 billion voters and more than 800 million Internet users. On average, Indians spend more than three hours a day on social media. Against this backdrop, stopping the spread of false and misinformation is a high-risk endeavor.

Analysts said this would require round-the-clock monitoring by law enforcement and election officials and issuing deletion orders to social platforms Facebook and X. And fake news is so rampant during the election season that it is almost impossible to quickly identify and delete it in time.

Experts said that merely arresting and punishing counterfeiters and disseminators can only "treat the symptoms", and India needs to formulate a comprehensive artificial intelligence law to "treat the root cause".

"There are no rules at all," said Kodali, a data and security researcher. "The government is letting the tech industry regulate itself rather than creating regulations."

It is reported that the Indian government only requires technology companies to obtain government approval before publicly launching "unreliable" or "untested" AI models or tools.

Some commentators pointed out that AI technology has been integrated into India's political landscape, prompting major changes in campaign activities and information dissemination methods. However, the misuse of AI and the lack of related supervision also pose major challenges to the prospects of “AI elections”.