Deep Fake and fake videos to be positive says BJP
The Indian right wing political party BJP has mentioned the use of Deep Fake, artificial intelligence technology to produce realistic videos for the use of lies and propaganda.
Citing the technology will be used to please people and gain political benefits. This is the first time the technology is being used for political campaigns.
In their initial testing please they changed the language of a local political leader and spread them via 5,800 WhatsApp groups administered or accessed by the BJP IT-cell.
The notorious IT-cell of BJP is known for spreading false information against Muslims, Christians, Hindu minorites like Dalits, while typically targeting countries like Pakistan as a bait for filling Indian masses.
When the Delhi BJP IT Cell partnered with political communications firm The Ideaz Factory to create “positive campaigns” using deepfakes to reach different linguistic voter bases, it marked the debut of deepfakes in election campaigns in India. “Deepfake technology has helped us scale campaign efforts like never before,” Neelkant Bakshi, co-incharge of social media and IT for BJP Delhi, tells VICE. “The Haryanvi videos let us convincingly approach the target audience even if the candidate didn’t speak the language of the voter.”
This was reported by BBC earlier mentioning how widespread was their media propaganda with over 250 fake news sites in multiple languages.
The full pdf article can be downloaded here:
http://kashmir.esy.es/wp-content/uploads/20191213_InfluencingPolicymakers-with-Fake-media-outlets.pdf
Original pdf report of fake news
The report and video coverage by NDTV shows the brazenness of a public entity (BJP) not only accepting that they faked the video but will do it again and often in the election campaign.
As the evil is spread by Satan, never happens in one blow. A gradual increase in evil. The same strategy is being adopted by ultra right wings throughout the world since ages. As an example; Israel controls almost all of Palestine illegally but it did so over decades. The same actions by BJP from amending the laws to support lynchings and hate speech are part of the same war tactic to kill in thousand blows.
Initially, the fake video was spotted by VICE news:
In the BJP’s choreographed words, it is done to create “positive campaigns”.
When the Delhi BJP IT Cell partnered with political communications firm The Ideaz Factory to create “positive campaigns” using deepfakes to reach different linguistic voter bases, it marked the debut of deepfakes in election campaigns in India. “Deepfake technology has helped us scale campaign efforts like never before,” Neelkant Bakshi, co-incharge of social media and IT for BJP Delhi, tells VICE. “The Haryanvi videos let us convincingly approach the target audience even if the candidate didn’t speak the language of the voter.”
Tiwari’s fabricated video was used widely to dissuade the large Haryanvi-speaking migrant worker population in Delhi from voting for the rival political party. According to Bakshi, these deepfakes were distributed across 5,800 WhatsApp groups in the Delhi and NCR region, reaching approximately 15 million people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-50749764
Report by BBC
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/in-bjps-deepfake-video-shared-on-whatsapp-manoj-tiwari-speaks-in-2-languages-2182923
NDTV coverage of Manoj Tiwari’s fake video
https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/jgedjb/the-first-use-of-deepfakes-in-indian-election-by-bjp
citiation showing the original break of this story