How are we feeling today?
It better not be emotions for the ocean about rich people.
Oh, rich emotions, but spelt the other way as a pun.
With ocean in it.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
I gotta make a note of this before we both.
Rich people's emotions.
Oh, that's nice.
That looks like a really wrong word though.
I'm sure Google agrees.
You know what?
How is the uncertain one looking?
I don't know the last time I updated this,
to be honest, because we're so full.
The brim.
Okay.
Oh yeah, here we go.
Here we go.
I got you covered.
Don't worry.
You're sounding very certain for a category that is uncertain.
Oh, I'm feeling very certain for the uncertain.
I've been holding on to this one for a while,
so it's probably grossly outdated.
But this is an article from Wired.
I'm so excited about this right now.
May 20th, 2024, six o'clock a.m.
We're a little behind, but not that behind.
You probably haven't heard of this
because it's not our part of the world.
And it's titled, Indian voters are being bombarded
with millions of deep fakes.
Political candidates approve.
And then it said, no, I'm just gonna go right to the article.
I'm not gonna read the little part that gives it all away.
Okay.
On a stifling April afternoon in Anjmer,
in the Indian state of Rajasthan,
oh, this is like a story,
local political shakti Singh Rathore
sat down in front of a green screen to shoot a short video.
He looked nervous.
It was his time being cloned.
Wearing a crisp white shirt
and a ceremonial saffron scarf,
wearing a lotus flower, the logo of the BJP,
the country's ruling party, Rathore,
pressed his palms together
and greeted his audience in Hindu, Lamash Scar.
He began to all my brothers.
Before he could continue,
the director of the shoot walked into the frame.
Divyendra Singh Jadun, a 31 year old
with a bald head and a thick black beard,
told Rathore he was moving around too much on camera.
Jadun was trying to capture enough audio and video data
to build an AI deep fake of Rathore
that would convince 300,000 potential voters around Anjmer
that they had a personalized conversation with him.
An excess movement would shake the algorithm.
Jadun told his subject to look straight into the camera
and move only his lips.
Start again, he said.
Right now, the world's largest democracy
is going to the polls.
Close to a billion Indians are eligible to vote
as part of the country's general election.
And deep fakes could play a decisive
and potentially divisive role.
India's political parties have exploited AI
to warp reality through cheap audio fakes,
propaganda images and AI parodies.
But while the global discourse on deep fakes
often focuses on misinformation, disinformation
and other societal harms,
many Indian politicians are using the technology
for a different purpose, voter outreach.
Across the ideological spectrum,
they're relying on AI to navigate
the nation's 22 official languages
and thousands of regional dialects
and to deliver personalized messages
in farther flung communities.
While the US recently made it illegal
to use AI-generated voices for unsolicited calls,
in India, sanctioned deep fakes
have become a $60 million, Jesus,
60 million business opportunity.
More than 50 million AI-generated voice clone calls
were made in two months,
leading up to the start of the elections in April.
Millions more will be made during the voting.
One of the country's largest business messaging operators
told IAR.
Jadun is the poster boy of the burgeoning industry,
his firm, fully mass synthetic media solutions.
It's one of the many deep fakes service providers
from across India that have emerged
a cater to the political class.
This election season, Jadun had delivered
five AI campaigns so far for which his company
has been paid a total of $55,000.
He charges significantly less
than the big political consultants,
125,000 rupees, which is 1,500 to make a digital avatar
and 60,000 rupees, which is $720.
US, I'm a suiting, an audio clone.
He's made deep fakes of Prem Singh Tamang,
chief minister of the Himalayan state of Sikkim
and resurrected YS Rajasera Reddy,
an iconic politician who died in a helicopter crash
in 2009 to endorse his son,
YS Jagan Mohan Reddy,
currently chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Jadun has also created AI generated propaganda songs
for several politicians, including Tamang,
a local candidate for parliament
and the chief minister of the Western state of Maharashtra.
He is our pride, ring one song in Hindi
about a local political politician in Ashmer
with male and female voices set to a peppy tune.
He has always been impartial.
It's weird that there's kind of like a give and take
that's most good and bad for this.
Like the fact that they can actually talk
to people in all languages.
Right?
When they said that, I was like,
okay, that seems like a good thing.
But also they could hire people in those languages to help.
Could they not?
They could.
It's just going to be the person
not speaking their language.
And it might be a misrepresentation to somebody
but like, oh wow, they speak my language fluently.
They understand me.
Yeah.
Which is a part of the good thing.
Now I'm gonna just be honest with you.
I'm not gonna read you the rest of this article
because it goes on and on.
There is much, much more to the article.
I thought it was a very interesting article
which I'm going to, you are going to link up
in the show notes for this
in case you want to have a more in depth read.
I think more it was the idea of another country using AI
and just the thought of that being a thing.
And like Taylor just said,
it has some good connotations to it.
It also has some really bad connotations to it.
If it gets any worse, we'll never know
because we're not reading the rest of the article.
I think we can know somewhat
just because the Indian election happened last month.
It is over, I think for the most part.
Modi won but not as much as people thought he would win by.
So I don't know how I played into that
but that was kind of what was expected to happen.
Well I like that you had kind of an update for us on that.
But yeah, I thought it was really interesting
seeing that article, which is why it made me so excited
to be reading that.
And I think we are feeling uncertain about that
as I think where we left it.
Yeah, it was fairly well posted
in there.
Another 100%.
Look at that.
And with that, you can all feel content for 48 hours
that we have properly classified information.
My filing is just a move away.
Bye.