Audio clips shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party on its X account targeting Opposition leaders in Maharashtra, hours before voting for the state Assembly polls began, were generated by Artificial Intelligence tools, fact-checking organisation BOOM has said.
The Hindutva party claimed that the “leaked recordings” were evidence that implicated Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Supriya Sule, Congress leader Nana Patole, Indian Police Service officer Amitabh Gupta and Gaurav Mehta, who works with an audit firm, in misappropriating cryptocurrency to fund the state elections.
On Wednesday, the Enforcement Directorate began to search Mehta’s home in Chattisgarh’s Raipur, India Today reported.
However, when BOOM analysed the clips using TrueMedia.org’s deepfake detection tool, it found that they were fake. Comparisons of the voices in the clips with publicly available interviews of the purported participants in the conversations revealed significant discrepancies, the fact-checking organisation said.
On Wednesday, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra publicised the allegations during a press conference even as polling was underway in the state. The previous day, a similar press conference had been presided over by BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi.
In one clip, Sule and Patole allegedly discuss converting Bitcoin to cash to avoid investigations in a 2018 case, while another features Patole purporting to threaten Gupta.
BOOM determined that three of the four recordings were AI-generated. The fourth was only five seconds in length. The analysis was inconclusive due to its brevity but showed no evidence of authenticity, the fact checker said.
The BJP has yet to respond to allegations that it created and shared AI-generated content.
Sule rejected the allegations, adding that she had filed a complaint with the Election Commission and the police’s cybercrime cell.
“Familiar tactics of spreading false information to manipulate the righteous voters are being resorted to, a night before the polling day,” Sule wrote on X. “We have filed a criminal complaint to the Hon’ble ECI & the cybercrime department against the fake allegations made of bitcoin misappropriation. The intent and mala fide actors behind it are amply evident, condemn-worthy that such practices are taking place in a healthy democracy guided by the Constitution of India.”
In another post, she said: “My lawyer will be issuing a criminal & civil defamation notice against Sudhanshu Trivedi for making outrightly false allegations with an intent to deceive the public at large.”
The BJP is fighting the elections as part of the Mahayuti alliance, along with the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party.
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi comprises mainly the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar).
Votes for the election to the state’s 288-member Assembly will be counted on Saturday.