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SCHNEIER ON SECURITY Menu * Blog * Newsletter * Books * Essays * News * Talks * Academic * About Me SEARCH Powered by DuckDuckGo Blog Essays Whole site SUBSCRIBE HomeBlog AI AND THE INDIAN ELECTION As India concluded the world’s largest election on June 5, 2024, with over 640 million votes counted, observers could assess how the various parties and factions used artificial intelligence technologies—and what lessons that holds for the rest of the world. The campaigns made extensive use of AI, including deepfake impersonations of candidates, celebrities and dead politicians. By some estimates, millions of Indian voters viewed deepfakes. But, despite fears of widespread disinformation, for the most part the campaigns, candidates and activists used AI constructively in the election. They used AI for typical political activities, including mudslinging, but primarily to better connect with voters. DEEPFAKES WITHOUT THE DECEPTION Political parties in India spent an estimated US$50 million on authorized AI-generated content for targeted communication with their constituencies this election cycle. And it was largely successful. Indian political strategists have long recognized the influence of personality and emotion on their constituents, and they started using AI to bolster their messaging. Young and upcoming AI companies like The Indian Deepfaker, which started out serving the entertainment industry, quickly responded to this growing demand for AI-generated campaign material. In January, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, former chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu for two decades, appeared via video at his party’s youth wing conference. He wore his signature yellow scarf, white shirt, dark glasses and had his familiar stance—head slightly bent sideways. But Karunanidhi died in 2018. His party authorized the deepfake. In February, the All-India Anna Dravidian Progressive Federation party’s official X account posted an audio clip of Jayaram Jayalalithaa, the iconic superstar of Tamil politics colloquially called “Amma” or “Mother.” Jayalalithaa died in 2016. Meanwhile, voters received calls from their local representatives to discuss local issues—except the leader on the other end of the phone was an AI impersonation. Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) workers like Shakti Singh Rathore have been frequenting AI startups to send personalized videos to specific voters about the government benefits they received and asking for their vote over WhatsApp. MULTILINGUAL BOOST Deepfakes were not the only manifestation of AI in the Indian elections. Long before the election began, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a tightly packed crowd celebrating links between the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of India and the city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Instructing his audience to put on earphones, Modi proudly announced the launch of his “new AI technology” as his Hindi speech was translated to Tamil in real time. In a country with 22 official languages and almost 780 unofficial recorded languages, the BJP adopted AI tools to make Modi’s personality accessible to voters in regions where Hindi is not easily understood. Since 2022, Modi and his BJP have been using the AI-powered tool Bhashini, embedded in the NaMo mobile app, to translate Modi’s speeches with voiceovers in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi. As part of their demos, some AI companies circulated their own viral versions of Modi’s famous monthly radio show “Mann Ki Baat,” which loosely translates to “From the Heart,” which they voice cloned to regional languages. ADVERSARIAL USES Indian political parties doubled down on online trolling, using AI to augment their ongoing meme wars. Early in the election season, the Indian National Congress released a short clip to its 6 million followers on Instagram, taking the title track from a new Hindi music album named “Chor” (thief). The video grafted Modi’s digital likeness onto the lead singer and cloned his voice with reworked lyrics critiquing his close ties to Indian business tycoons. The BJP retaliated with its own video, on its 7-million-follower Instagram account, featuring a supercut of Modi campaigning on the streets, mixed with clips of his supporters but set to unique music. It was an old patriotic Hindi song sung by famous singer Mahendra Kapoor, who passed away in 2008 but was resurrected with AI voice cloning. Modi himself quote-tweeted an AI-created video of him dancing—a common meme that alters footage of rapper Lil Yachty on stage—commenting “such creativity in peak poll season is truly a delight.” In some cases, the violent rhetoric in Modi’s campaign that put Muslims at risk and incited violence was conveyed using generative AI tools, but the harm can be traced back to the hateful rhetoric itself and not necessarily the AI tools used to spread it. THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE India is an early adopter, and the country’s experiments with AI serve as an illustration of what the rest of the world can expect in future elections. The technology’s ability to produce nonconsensual deepfakes of anyone can make it harder to tell truth from fiction, but its consensual uses are likely to make democracy more accessible. The Indian election’s embrace of AI that began with entertainment, political meme wars, emotional appeals to people, resurrected politicians and persuasion through personalized phone calls to voters has opened a pathway for the role of AI in participatory democracy. The surprise outcome of the election, with the BJP’s failure to win its predicted parliamentary majority, and India’s return to a deeply competitive political system especially highlights the possibility for AI to have a positive role in deliberative democracy and representative governance. LESSONS FOR THE WORLD’S DEMOCRACIES It’s a goal of any political party or candidate in a democracy to have more targeted touch points with their constituents. The Indian elections have shown a unique attempt at using AI for more individualized communication across linguistically and ethnically diverse constituencies, and making their messages more accessible, especially to rural, low-income populations. AI and the future of participatory democracy could make constituent communication not just personalized but also a dialogue, so voters can share their demands and experiences directly with their representatives—at speed and scale. India can be an example of taking its recent fluency in AI-assisted party-to-people communications and moving it beyond politics. The government is already using these platforms to provide government services to citizens in their native languages. If used safely and ethically, this technology could be an opportunity for a new era in representative governance, especially for the needs and experiences of people in rural areas to reach Parliament. This essay was written with Vandinika Shukla and previously appeared in The Conversation. Tags: artificial intelligence, deepfake, democracy, India Posted on June 13, 2024 at 7:02 AM • 13 Comments * Two clicks for more privacy: The Facebook Like button will be enabled once you click here. No data is loaded from Facebook until you enable the button. Click the [i] button for more information. not connected to Facebook * Two clicks for more privacy: The Tweet button will be enabled once you click here. No data is loaded from Twitter until you enable the button. Click the [i] button for more information. not connected to Twitter * If you click to activate the share buttons, data will be loaded from a third party, allowing them to track your visit to schneier.com. For more details click the [i] button. COMMENTS What Price common sense? • June 13, 2024 9:25 AM @Bruce Schneier @ALL “But Karunanidhi died in 2018. His party authorized the deepfake.” I do not know about Indian law but that is clearly “an act for gain” which is usually considered the first step of an “intent to commit fraud”. The next step is some form of ” unlawful act” be it a breach of a civil or private duty. I suspect that “his party” did not have a signed contract with either Karunanidhi or his appointed Estate. Thus the word “authorized” is misleading without qualification and in effect hides what many would consider and probably is “Fraud”. What Price common sense? • June 13, 2024 9:42 AM @Bruce Schneier @ALL Was the use of AI a failure? It rather depends on how you look at it. One aspect to consider is that the use of AI increasingly causes switch-off or disconnect by electors with the politicians, parties, and process. In the West / First World especially WASP nations those turning out to vote was seen for decades as dropping thus it was assumed “the young were disconnecting with the process”. The use of AI can be argued from this election to be causing not a disconnect from the process but “the parties and their politicians”. If we take a longterm view it could be that the use of AI will cause the break down of not the process but the major parties and large area politicians, in favour of real face to face contact with the more local or very local politicians. There are quite a few who would see this as a net benefit. Eddie Bernays • June 13, 2024 10:18 AM Has anyone noticed that the one option Mr. Schneier doesn’t consider is that perhaps society would be better off without AI? Every essay, every talk, every carefully crafted talking point seems to pivot on the unspoken assumption that AI will somehow not make us lazy, stupid, traceable, and dangerously reliant on tech? Has someone gotten to Mr. Schneier? He seemed so concerned about mass surveillance and yet oddly his skepticism is notably absent in this case? Winter • June 13, 2024 10:40 AM @Eddie Bernays > Has anyone noticed that the one option Mr. Schneier doesn’t consider is that > perhaps society would be better off without AI? It has been considered that humanity would have been better off without agriculture, gunpowder, or nuclear weapons. But none of these can be uninvented. It is simply not possible to uninvent AI. Someone somewhere will recreate it. echo • June 13, 2024 10:59 AM If I was forced to take a position this article makes me AI hostile. I’ve seen too much political damage done with unchallenged puffery in a race to sunny uplands to trust this article one little bit. When my intuition starts twitching and I feel uncomfortable with something I’ve learned the hard way not to ignore it. I’m more inclined to lean towards wanting to see AI banned after reading this article. It’s a big hard “NO” until I know what I’m dealing with. There’s just too much instability and BS floating about to add AI to the mix. NO. Just NO. There’s been a run of articles I’m not happy with. This latest one shilling AI without any political understanding in my mind is reputation damaging. I’ve noticed other tech types pushing their beaks into the soft sciences so it’s not just a one off. In some quarters here is trampling over political scientists, and gender studies experts, and sociologists. It’s like someone is trying to stage a tech coup. Given STEM and security employment levels for women still only hover around 30% and workplace bad habits still exist after the past 20 years I’m feeling even more twitchy about it. It’s more like a “bro” coup. Eddie Berneys • June 13, 2024 11:09 AM @winter It’s not about inventing, it’s about using… Of course the road to extinction is paved by those who insist that “There Is No Alternative, you cannot un-invent something, resistance is futile, blah blah blah… ” AI in the best case scenario will render the average person incapable of independent thought and turn billionaires into monarchs. In the worst case it will destroy us as retired experts from Google have warned. Yet Mr. Schneier has carefully framed his narrative to eschew opting out. Winter • June 13, 2024 11:19 AM @Eddie Berneys > It’s not about inventing, it’s about using… Historically, a ban on using a useful tool has never worked. Let’s face it, even chemical and biological weapons that are so horrible that humanity has decided to ban them and never use them are still stockpiled. We even know people that have used them in the recent past. Winter • June 13, 2024 2:10 PM @Eddie Bernays > According to your argument, it would appear that people are hairless monkeys > who simply cannot help themselves when it comes to brandishing about the means > of their own demise. History largely shows this to be the case. Borodin • June 13, 2024 2:44 PM Firstly, I agree with the top comment that I cannot imagine these dead people consented. At best, their families did. We can only hope they were familiar enough to know the will of the deceased. I would not dare take responsibility for authorizing such a thing, not even if the deceased were my twin brother. I will certainly look into including some legalese in my will to prevent this kind of abuse of my likeness and voice after my passing. Secondly, I am amazed that Mr. Schneier chose to omit the concerns one might have when considering the usage of AI in elections. Perhaps Your intention was to leave such matters to the scholars of the respective disciplines? Yet the last paragraph seems to rule out that possibility. One commentor mentioned voter disconnect. This thought occurred to me as well: If they use AI to reach voters, how will voters’ concerns reach them? Will the AI create a list of bullet points so that some underpaid aid can discard them? Will our politicians still feel connected to the people they represent? Of course, any human being cannot personally interact with a billion people while also crafting legislation and running a nation. Is that not why we formed parties? If the people I trust all trust someone, I will likely trust them as well. Using AI to send targeted political ads to every voter will finally create the use case that made me invested in a right to privacy: voter manipulation. Using the copious amounts of data collected by Facebook and co., people will receive just the content and promises they want to hear. Politics may become a game of reach: Who can post ads that reach the most people? Who can aggregate the best data? Manipulating people using their emotions is easy. And now it will be convenient as well. If You wish for a democratic use of AI, perhaps give its power to the people. Right now, most of them have neither the resources nor the knowledge to make use of it. Well, those are my two cents. echo • June 13, 2024 3:22 PM “If” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. What Price common sense? • June 13, 2024 3:25 PM @Eddie Bernays There is a couple of sayings / truisms “You can’t unring the bell.” “On balance there is always a minimum of two sides.” So in the normal course of events anything that gets invented will remain untill something else replaces it for some reason. But any invention no matter how narrow the scope will have more than one use. A knife cuts food and you can stab/cut someone or something. If a use is good or bad is a choice made by a usually uninvolved observer either at the time of the use or later. Two or more observers may see the same use as good or bad and importantly for different reasons. Personally I see the current AI as being put to use that is both good and bad under different circumstances. However my overriding view is that it is a con game like snake oil being sold to gullible people. Whilst people talk about jobs being lost to AI this is no different to any other evolutionary process. Most jobs are actually not worth doing at the best of times and in the middle between necessary and desirable there is a massive chunk of “make-work” that unbelievably people have become specialists in… So getting rid of those jobs mostly will have only transitory effects no matter how painful they are at the time. The reason makework actually exists is “mental health” and “social cohesion”. As the truism has it “The devil makes work for idle hands” And in reality that is what makework is for, keeping otherwise idle hands out of trouble and giving people a place in a hierarchy so they can work their way up. That is they get a sense of place in what they view as society. This is what AI will unfortunately disrupt the most and where it’s real danger exists. Could it destroy society as we currently know it yes and it most certainly will. Will society survive, yes but it will be a diferent society. So no I don’t think AI will be able existential in the way, way to many are portraying it. Look at this way, Is a car better than a horse and cart? The answer rather depends on if you are a horse or a human. Humans had the same issue with other forms of mechanisation powered looms gave us the word “Sabotage” from the French word “sabot” which was a wooden shoe or base of a boot that traditional loom users threw into the powered looms. Hence “sabotage” really does mean “putting the boot in”. A study of the past three hundr d years of industrial/mechanical history will give you a feeling for what AI could do, but is most likely to do. The fastest and safest way to get the transition past is to deal with the 1% of the 1% basically do to them what they have done to society which is “asset strip” them and put it to more worthwhile use. cls • June 14, 2024 12:38 AM @Eddie Bernays Re: Has someone gotten to Mr. Schneier? He seemed so concerned about mass surveillance and yet oddly his skepticism is notably absent in this case? He’s been replaced by an AI Bot! Scaler • June 14, 2024 3:13 PM @Borodin “Manipulating people using their emotions is easy.” I’m not saying I agree but if I did that strikes me as a challenge that should be solved. Therein may be the actual problem and solution. Subscribe to comments on this entry LEAVE A COMMENT CANCEL REPLY Login Name Email URL: Remember personal info? Fill in the blank: the name of this blog is Schneier on ___________ (required): Comments: Allowed HTML <a href="URL"> • <em> <cite> <i> • <strong> <b> • <sub> <sup> • <ul> <ol> <li> • <blockquote> <pre> Markdown Extra syntax via https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/ Δ ← Using AI for Political Polling Demo of AES GCM Misuse Problems → Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis. Powered by WordPress Hosted by Pressable ABOUT BRUCE SCHNEIER I am a public-interest technologist, working at the intersection of security, technology, and people. I've been writing about security issues on my blog since 2004, and in my monthly newsletter since 1998. I'm a fellow and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, a board member of EFF, and the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc. This personal website expresses the opinions of none of those organizations. 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