Now, political parties run social media campaign with AIdriven twist
The late CPI(M) stalwart E.K. Nayanar was a crowdpuller for the party during elections. Nearly two decades since his death, the affable leader has made a ‘comeback’ to the bustle of the 2024 Lok Sabha electioneering, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).
A 28second Instagram story featuring the former Chief Minister seeking support in his voice for the Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate from the Attingal Lok Sabha constituency V. Joy has gone viral on social media.
“Nayanar was universally liked and guaranteed an immediate connect with the people. We split the story into two parts: video and audio. The audio part was more challenging as we had to get his modulations and slang spot on. We created a data set of his voice, trained an AI model and integrated it with a base voice of a person whose slang almost matched the Kannur lingo of Nayanar. We also used open source software to filter out noise,” says Arun Raj, a visual artist who created the story.
The BJP, on the other hand, has used AI to create the impression of their lucky mascot Narendra Modi delivering speeches in multiple languages, including in Malayalam. “We have created an exclusive X handle, NaMo Malayalam, for showcasing the
Prime Minister’s speeches across the country in Malayalam,” says S. Jayasankar, convener, State IT & social media cell, BJP.
Tried and tested path
AIdriven content, however, are far and few in between as the social media campaigning of political parties and candidates continues to rely on tried and tested stories, reels and short videos across popular platforms. Only the quality of production has improved significantly with some of the reels and videos almost having a cinematographic quality while aerial shots using drones being the toast.
“Our short videos in Malayalam titled ‘myth busters’ to bust the past guarantees of Narendra Modi have become immensely popular and is being now converted into more languages. We have also made explainer videos on each guarantee enshrined in “Nyay Patra,’ Congress manifesto, and put in place a structured system to disseminate it across various social media platforms for maximising reach. In 100 days, the official Indian National Congress Kerala handle has garnered over 50,000 followers,” says Sarin P., convener, State Digital Media Cell, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee.
Cyberwarfare
Political parties are largely following a hub and spoke model when it comes to social mediabased campaigning.
While political content relevant at the State and national level is being shared by their State cells, the campaigning at the constituency level is mostly left to the teams of individual candidates, who mostly engage a mix of party and outside professionals.
Amidst all this, cyberwarfare is going on as usual between rival political parties.
For instance, the Congress has approached the Election Commission over a fake social media post declaring a protest by Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee acting president in front of the Idukki diocese of the SyroMalabar Church in the wake of the screening of movie The Kerala Story. The party found it mischievous and aimed at arousing communal passion exploiting the fact that the acting KPCC president M.M. Hassan was from the Muslim community.