A fake video of two top Bollywood actors has gone viral. It sees them criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and appealing to vote for Congress, the main opposition party in India’s ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
Aamir Khan’s video is 30 seconds long and Ranveer Singh’s video is 41 seconds long. The two Bollywood actors say in two videos that Modi has failed to keep his election promises and has also failed to solve the country’s dire economic crisis during his two terms as prime minister.
Both the AI-generated videos ended with the Congress election symbol and slogan (‘Vote for justice, vote for Congress’).
According to Reuters, the video has received more than 500,000 views on social media since last week.
India’s general elections began on Friday. Will continue until June. Such artificial intelligence-generated content could play a huge role in these elections. That possibility has increased since the two controversial videos went viral. Elsewhere in the world, including in the US, Pakistan and Indonesia, AI and AI-generated fake or ‘deepfake’ content are being widely used in elections.
Sujata Paul, a spokesperson for the Congress party, shared the video of actor Ranveer Singh with her 16,000 followers on her X handle between April 17 and Saturday afternoon. Paul’s post has been re-shared 2,900 times, garnered 8,700 ‘likes’ and 438,000 ‘views’.
This post was no longer seen on the X handle on Sunday. The post disappeared hours after Reuters asked the head of Congress’s social media cell for comment. However, he did not respond.
Both the actors have said that the videos are fake. Facebook, X and at least eight fact-finding websites said the videos had been defaced or altered. Reuters’ digital verification department also confirmed the matter.
Actor Ranveer Singh wrote on his X handle on Friday, ‘Beware of deepfakes, friends.’
Modi’s office and the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell did not respond to requests for comment.
On April 17, Aamir Khan filed a case in Mumbai against an unidentified person on charges of forgery and cheating for making fake videos. The police have started an investigation on this.
Police officials said they stayed up till 2am on Friday ‘refreshing the page’ to see if Aamir Khan’s online video had been removed.
Congress leader Vijay Vasantha’s spokesperson in south India said his party created a 2-minute audio-video using artificial intelligence and shared it on multiple social media platforms. This video shows that Vijay’s father is a popular politician H. Vasantakumar (who is now deceased) is seeking votes for his son.
Source: Voice of America
