By Nivedita Niranjankumar
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionaries posted an audio visual clip of Arvind Kejriwal made up of AI generated photos showing him playing a guitar in jail and overlaid with a singing AI voice clone of the Delhi chief minister.
The video is the latest example of how political parties in India are using satire as a way to attack rivals on social media using artificial intelligence particularly generative AI while evading any punitive action from social media platforms.
The 27-second video has several AI generated photos of Kejriwal playing the guitar, while behind bars and some also showing former IRS officer and his wife Sunita Kejriwal standing beside him. The video also includes an audio cloned voice of the Aam Aadmi Party leader singing Bhula Dena, a song from the Hindi movie Aashiqui-2.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested on March 21, 2024, by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for his alleged connection to the liquor policy case. Other senior party members including Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh have also been accused of taking kickbacks in exchange for liquor licenses in the same case and are also behind bars. After Kejriwal withdrew a petition to quash his arrest from the Supreme Court, he was produced in the Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi on March 22 which placed him in the ED's custody for seven days. On April 1, 2024 the court remanded him to judicial custody till April 15.
The video was posted by BJP functionaries on X and by BJP pages on Facebook. Richa Rajpoot the social media head of the Uttar Pradesh BJP Youth Wing posted the video on X with a caption in Hindi that roughly translates to, "It would have been more fun if poisonous coughing was added (to this)"
The same was posted by a pro BJP account @paltupaltan on X and the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha Kathua, the youth wing page of the BJP on Facebook.
BOOM found that the video is a deepfake created by the Instagram handle @paltupaltann which first posted it as a reel on March 30, 2024. The video which has since gone viral also carries the watermark of the same account.
We first analysed the images used in the video and found several anomalies that showed the images were AI-generated. In the below two photos, Kejriwal has more than five fingers on each hand. In the photo on the right, Kejriwal's hand looks meshed with no clearly defined fingers visible at all.
The same have been highlighted below:
AI Generated photos of CM Arvind Kejriwal used in the viral deepfake video.
We found similar discrepancies in the other images included in the reel starting with distorted toes of Sunita Kejriwal (bottom left) and a sitting Kejriwal (bottom right). In the photo on the right panel, the uniformed officers seen to have molten faces blending into the bars of the jail cell. Sunita Kejriwal's face also looks disproportionate to her body, indicating that the face has been digitally inserted into the image.
One can notice the image discrepancies below:
AI generated photos of Arvind Kejriwal used in a viral deepfake
We then analysed the audio and found that it was a voice clone of Kejriwal singing. BOOM uploaded the video on itisaar.ai a tool, developed by the Image Analysis and Biometric Lab (IAB) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, which determined the voice is an AI-based deepfake.
An increasing number of websites and apps allow users to create singing voice clones in the voices of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal.
There has been an increase in the use of generative AI to create deepfakes and voice clones of politicians being used in the run up to the impending Lok Sabha elections in India.
BOOM has previously reported on how AI-voice clones were used to spread disinformation in the run-up to 2023 Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) functionaries posted two audio clips of AI-generated voice clones of Kejriwal in Hindi and English last month.
