Last November, Muralikrishnan Chinnadurai witnessed an unusual incident while watching a livestream of a Tamil-language event in the UK. A woman claiming to be Duwaraka, the daughter of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tiger militant chief who had died in an airstrike during the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, was giving a speech. However, it was evident that Duwaraka had passed away over a decade ago, and the video showed her as a middle-aged woman, urging Tamilians worldwide to continue their political struggle for freedom.
Mr Chinnadurai, a fact-checker from Tamil Nadu, realized that the video was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) due to glitches he noticed. He understood the potential dangers of spreading misinformation, especially with elections approaching in Tamil Nadu.
As India gears up for elections, AI-generated content is becoming more prevalent, ranging from campaign videos to personalized messages in various Indian languages. However, experts are concerned about the implications of using AI to create fake news.
Despite recent arrests related to AI-generated content manipulation, there is still a lack of comprehensive regulations in place. Creators must rely on personal ethics to determine the type of work they choose to do. Requests from politicians have included creating pornographic imagery and altering videos and audios of their opponents to tarnish their reputation.
While some creators, like Divyendra Singh Jadoun, strive to include disclaimers on their work to differentiate it from reality, controlling the spread of deepfakes remains challenging.
The Indian government has taken some steps to regulate AI, following controversies such as Google’s Gemini chatbot response. However, fact-checkers face an uphill battle in debunking misinformation, particularly during the election season when fake news proliferates rapidly.
Despite the prevalence of AI-generated fake content, the election commission has remained silent on the issue, highlighting the lack of comprehensive rules governing the use of AI in political campaigns. “Están dejando que la industria tecnológica se autorregule en lugar de crear regulaciones reales.”
Los expertos dicen que no hay una solución infalible a la vista.
“Pero [por ahora] si se toman medidas contra las personas que difunden noticias falsas, podría asustar a otros contra compartir información no verificada”, dice el Sr. Qureshi.
[BBC]
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