Opinion Express View on deepfakes of deceased politicians: Campaigning, dead or alive

Even in the analogue age, the great men and women of Indian politics used to cast a long shadow. They built movements and parties, mobilised communities and won elections, ran governments and brought them down. In death, the assumption went, they would continue to inspire but would no longer have to perspire. A photo on the wall, an invocation at a political meeting of the “guiding light”, was enough. Apart from allowing the deceased to rest in peace, the passing of a generation — in politics, as in much else — allows new leadership to emerge and find its own vocabulary and practice. With AI, deepfakes and no barrier to distribution, however, the Digital Age is ensuring that deceased leaders do not, in a sense, die.

This election season has already witnessed a wide variety of content generated through artificial intelligence tools. There are parodies featuring leaders of the ruling party and the Opposition that have them singing songs and making statements. These videos and sound files mimic the appearance and voice of the leaders — sometimes so accurately that they are almost indistinguishable from the genuine article. And, as reported in this newspaper, the deepfake as a campaign tool is also indulging in necromancy. Both the DMK and AIADMK have used likenesses of their deceased leaders. A video of M Karunanidhi (died, 2018) was released by the former in which he is praising his son, Chief Minister M K Stalin. AIADMK workers received a message in the late J Jayalalithaa’s voice last month, asking them to support party leader Edappadi Palaniswami.

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The all-too-real fakes will present a challenge for the Election Commission. But the issue in using the likenesses of deceased leaders is not just one of authenticity. It also speaks of a failure of imagination in terms of defining future politics — by looking ahead, not by going back to the past. The challenge for leaders of today is to take a legacy forward, to re-imagine and re-invent. But then, who wants to lose their star campaigner, dead or alive?