The Problem With Wrongly Labelling Real Or Edited Videos As 'Deepfakes'
NDTV
An edited video of Home Minister Amit Shah went viral recently, falsely showing him promising an end to reservations for Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Other Backward Classes.
An edited video of Home Minister Amit Shah went viral recently, falsely showing him promising an end to reservations for Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Other Backward Classes. While BOOM's fact-check found that the video was doctored using video editing tools, it was falsely labelled as a 'deepfake' by other Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, and various mainstream media outlets.
Political parties in India are experimenting with AI in myriad ways this election season. For instance, AI voice clones of politicians are being used to craft cadre and voter outreach messages. Political parties are also skirting any social media rules by using satirical videos which use voice cloning, face swap and other AI editing techniques, to target their political rivals. These videos are posted on their official Instagram and YouTube handles.
However, the damaging deepfakes that are outright deceptive, are being shared either by IT cell workers, or through proxies and diffused actors, who support the party and their ideology. With misinformation peaking during election seasons in India, shallow fakes or cheapfakes still make up most of the misinformation seen online so far.