Today's Editorial

A deep threat to election integrity

Relevance: GS Paper II & III

Why in News?

India, the world's largest democracy, faces a new challenge in the 2024 general elections, posed by the widespread threat of deepfakes.

Key reforms by Election Commission of India (ECI):

• The Election Commission of India (ECI) has shown remarkable resilience by introducing various innovative measures such as election picture identification cards, electronic voting machines, and voter-verifiable paper audit trails.
• It has also established the institution of election observers and expenditure observers to ensure smooth and fair elections.
• Additionally, the ECI has effectively utilized social media platforms to raise voter awareness and participation.
• However, the 2024 general elections present the ECI with another daunting challenge — the pervasive threat of deepfakes.

Challenges posed by Deepfakes:

• Affecting decision making:
  • Deepfakes hold profound implications as they undermine the foundational basis of decision-making, erasing the line between fact and fiction.
  • The looming danger is the potential inundation of deepfake content, overshadowing factual information in practically every constituency crafted by multiple creators.

• Advent of generative adversarial networks (GANs):
  • The emergence of GANs, a variant of generative AI, facilitates the rapid generation of deepfakes in real-time contexts, seamlessly embedding them into reality to deceive even a discerning viewer.
  • The accessibility of GAN as a user-friendly software-as-a-service that is available online for a few dollars further compounds the issue.
• Weaponisation of social media:
  • In recent years, the weaponisation of social media has evolved, with misinformation and disinformation relying on textual or photoshopped elements.
  • The emergence of deep-fake audio-visual content significantly amplifies the potential for manipulation.
  • Deepfake videos engage multiple senses, grab attention, evoke emotions, and exaggerate confirmation bias, intensifying the weaponisation of social media.
• Undermining trust in elections:
  • In the context of elections, deepfake content poses a serious challenge to the integrity of the electoral process.
  • Deepfakes crafted by digital mercenaries include creating context-specific fake videos for diverse agendas.
  • Buyers range from political adversaries to foreign powers with hostile motives.
• Foreign Interference:
  • Deepfakes facilitate interference by foreign powers in the electoral process, endangering electoral sovereignty, especially those foreign powers who would not want India to elect a strong government.
• Human Perception and Bias:
  • Preserving content integrity through technological interventions like watermarking, blockchain, or cryptography is irrelevant in the context of deepfake videos influencing voters’ perceptions.
  • The virality of news exploits human cognitive vulnerabilities, favouring sensational deepfakes over authentic news.
    • Deepfake videos featuring leaders like the Prime Minister of India and the US President underscore the severity of the problem.

Concerns regarding current regulations:

• Information Technology (IT) Rules 2023 amendment:
  • The 2023 amendment to IT rules empowers the central government to instruct social media platforms and intermediaries to remove deep-fakes or objectionable content.
    • If the ECI identifies deepfakes, it requests the Union government for takedown, and compliance is obligatory.
  • However, the absence of defined timelines for compliance provides leeway for delays, which can result in the viral spread of spurious content in the fast-paced realm of social media.
    • This favours the ruling party, which can potentially time the takedown to suit its political gains.
  • The current IT rules focus on content takedown but lack penalties for crafting deepfakes.
• Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita:
• • The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita holds deepfake creators liable if mens-rea is established, placing the burden of proof on the prosecution.
    • Given the speed and scale of these incidents, proving mens rea is challenging.

Way forward:

• Regulatory Measures:
  • Amending the IT rules:
    • Amending the IT rules to grant the ECI the power to directly instruct intermediaries aligns with the ECI’s overall mandate of superintendence, direction and control of the election process under Article 324 of the Constitution.
  • Self-declaration by creators:
    • Allowing creative and scientific freedom to modify original content but requiring the creators to self-declare alterations made in such content, with presumed criminal intent in case of non-compliance, can help restrain the free run of deepfake creators.
  • Additionally, a law to regulate deepfake that should have extra-territorial jurisdiction for entities outside India targeting Indian interests is needed.
• Role of the Election Commission:
  • A pragmatic approach may concentrate on posts trending towards virality. The ECI may set thresholds to identify potentially viral posts.
  • Collaborating with leading IITs and Intel regarding the deployment of their Fakecatcher technology, which is capable of identifying tampered videos in real-time using photoplethysmography (a simple optical technique used to detect volumetric changes in blood in peripheral circulation), could expedite the implementation of this strategy before elections.
• Restricting availability of GAN:
  • Another brute force choice could relate to restricting GAN availability till the general elections are over.
• Global Cooperation:
  • A challenge is that most deepfakes are uploaded from abroad with masked entities. Work on a global alliance in this regard has started.
    • However, given India’s geopolitical context, expecting cooperation from nations that are most likely to undertake such activities is unrealistic.
  • A more practical solution involves collaborating with global platforms to swiftly share information regarding uploads, assistance in investigation, and quick removal of objectionable content.

Conclusion:

Deepfake poses a monumental threat to the 2024 general elections. An effective solution involves continuously monitoring social media content, promptly detecting and removing both fakes and deepfakes and taking penal action against perpetrators in real-time.