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The Hindu

National

Sahana Venugopal, Saumya Kalia

From IT bots to AI deepfakes: The evolution of election-related misinformation in India

India Facebook The Hindu Manoj Tiwari Bharatiya Janata Party Elon Musk Hindu Narendra Modi Twitter Inc. Instagram

Election season calls for a game of Real or Fake.

Take this pithy declaration in WhatsApp circulation from 2019, ahead of India’s General Elections: UNESCO Declare India’s “Jana Gana Mana” the World’s Best National Anthem. By now, ‘UNESCO declares India’ anything is a recognisable template; the forward holds celebrity status on the misinformation runway.

Try another. In a recent YouTube short, Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes to life. He speaks about freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Hindi, before continuing his speech in three other languages. His lip movements are in sync, the timbre of his voice maintained. The short has 190 views. Real or fake? A bit of both.

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