The use of Artifical Intelligence by PTI Chairman Imran Khan to address the party’s virtual rally was not without a certain particular irony. After all, at one time Mr Khan had warned his supporters that ‘deep fake’ technology had been used to make sleazy videos of him, and would be released in an effort to blacken his reputation. He himself gave a technical explanation about how AI could be used for this. His opponents argued that he was merely giving out in advance the defence he intended to use when that videoclip was released. As it is, such a video-clip was not released, and any damage to Mr Khan’s reputation was restricted to audio-clips. However, now AI has been used, and by his party, to simulate him addressing an audience. That audio-clip was played for the audience, for all the world as if Mr Khan was addressing it.
Mr Khan does have the excuse that he is presently in jail, and with the elections right on top of his party, he should begin campaigning. This is made all the more urgent by the fact that he is his party’s best campaigner by far, to the extent that it would only be a slight exaggeration to say that he is his only campaigner. Another way of looking at it would be to say that his party’s entering the electoral fray without his campaigning is like a boxer entering a bout with both arms tied behind his back.
The problem is not so much at Mr Khan’s end, as at the audience’s. What exactly have people heard? His ideas? His words? Him? What do people go to a rally for? In a large rally, theory may not see the leader on a distant stage, and hear his voice over a tinny loudspeaker. Now large screens are erected so that the audience might see the podium, and the man at it. If it becomes widespread, it would reduce the labour party leaders put in, and simultaneously multiply their presence, as they issue AI audio-clips to a hundred times the rallies they appear at.
It is the first time this method of campaigning has been used, and it was perhaps only because Mr Khan is imprisoned. Countries where politicians are not routinely imprisoned will probably avoid using it, because they might feel the disapproval of the electorate for even this inadvertent deceit. With Bangladesh and India both facing elections next year, it remains to be seen whether the4y take to this method. It also remains to be seen how many PTI officebearers, mostly on the run or under arrest, adopt this method, which is probably also against the law.
