Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. In the small town
Speaker 1: of Pushkar in northwest India, Deviandra Singh Jadoun is hard
Speaker 1: at work in his studio. The Vibe is kind of
Speaker 1: similar to a Silicon Valley startup. In its early days,
Speaker 1: Jaduna set up a small workshop where he and a
Speaker 1: handful of coworkers create digital content. He's gone from making
Speaker 1: Bollywood spoofs to creating videos like this one.
Speaker 2: Made Piai Hit Jane made Piai Man Media, Piati Abishek
Speaker 2: Samson made Pagan Johan.
Speaker 1: It appears to be Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India,
Speaker 1: but it's actually a deep fake. Jadoun, who calls himself
Speaker 1: the Indian deep Faker, is using AI technology to make
Speaker 1: it seem like Mody is speaking directly to individual voters.
Speaker 1: In that clip, you hear him sub in four different names.
Speaker 1: He refers to each of them as my dear. The
Speaker 1: largest election in history just got under way in India,
Speaker 1: and Jadun is in high demand. He makes videos like
Speaker 1: these and AI chatbots for candidates looking to capitalize on
Speaker 1: a largely unregulated technology to reach a wider range of
Speaker 1: constituents quickly and what Jadun is doing is changing how
Speaker 1: politicians campaign in the world's largest democracy, and that could
Speaker 1: have implications worldwide as countries grapple with the disinformation risks
Speaker 1: that come with AI. This year, the stakes are really high.
Speaker 1: There are national elections in more than sixty countries, including
Speaker 1: the US, and this technology doesn't recognize borders. Here's another
Speaker 1: video from Jadun. You might recognize this voice even if
Speaker 1: you've never heard him speak in Hindi. Trump Nehihu raji
Speaker 1: shtumkaka rehu may I slid Trump. Nahihu Tunita tum kaka
Speaker 1: rehu may I slid Trump. That was a deep fake
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump from the same public facing highlight reel
Speaker 1: Jadoon made that featured the Modi video. In it, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is also addressing different people by name and noting
Speaker 1: he is not the real Donald Trump. On today's show,
Speaker 1: what a deep fake operation in India tells us about
Speaker 1: the year ahead when there are elections all over the
Speaker 1: world and the challenges of regulating this new and fast
Speaker 1: growing technology. This is the big take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: I'm David Gerra, really, I promise Diveandra Jadoon is having
Speaker 1: a pretty busy year. The thirty one year old has
Speaker 1: built a business around making deep fakes. At first, his
Speaker 1: work was mostly entertainment focused.
Speaker 2: During COVID, he told me that he started using a
Speaker 2: lot of these technolology tools where he started making videos
Speaker 2: and superimposing other celebrities on Bollywood dance videos or superimposing
Speaker 2: celebrities from Bollywood onto Hollywood movie clips.
Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg. Sarita Rye, she covers AI in Asia from
Speaker 1: her home base in Bangalore, having.
Speaker 2: Really clunky little videos. He showed me a few examples.
Speaker 2: They weren't really very technically advanced.
Speaker 1: Sretha says. The advent of Open AI's chat GPT made
Speaker 1: it easier for Jadune to make higher quality videos, and
Speaker 1: soon he saw an opportunity to branch into politics in India,
Speaker 1: where there's a big demand for AI generated videos. There
Speaker 1: are broadly speaking, two kinds of deep fakes we're seeing
Speaker 1: in elections this year. There are deep fakes from campaigns
Speaker 1: who want the next generation AI driven version of a
Speaker 1: text message tailored to each voter. The other kind are
Speaker 1: intentionally misleading videos in which someone's likeness is used without
Speaker 1: that person's knowledge or consent to influence the outcome. Of
Speaker 1: an election and told Serita he has ground rules for
Speaker 1: what kind of work he takes on.
Speaker 2: He tells me that he doesn't accept contracts and commissions
Speaker 2: that come to him directly from candidates. He would rather
Speaker 2: it come from a digital agency, or an AI agency,
Speaker 2: or a contractor or even a political party. But he
Speaker 2: says usually they come through these intermediaries that are contracted
Speaker 2: by the mainstream parties. He's definitely not playing sides in
Speaker 2: terms of his work. He's told me that he's working
Speaker 2: for practically all the major political parties.
Speaker 1: What is the operation that he's built up?
Speaker 2: Look like he started off as a one man shop,
Speaker 2: but he since expanded because all of the work that
Speaker 2: is coming to him. The first time I spoke to him,
Speaker 2: he said he had a couple of workers, and that
Speaker 2: was a few months ago, and then he told me
Speaker 2: now he has five other employees who helped they make
Speaker 2: these videos.
Speaker 1: Making those personalized videos, like the ones of Mody and Trump,
Speaker 1: involve feeding an AI model audio or video of a
Speaker 1: person to capture their voice, facial expressions, and movements.
Speaker 2: It takes a few days up to a week to
Speaker 2: train the AI models, but once trained, he can produce
Speaker 2: these very quickly, like instantly, almost like within minutes, he
Speaker 2: can make these videos.
Speaker 1: Sriita says that in India, politicians are using deep fake
Speaker 1: videos like jededuns for voter outreach. It's a relatively inexpensive
Speaker 1: way to appeal to people all over this huge country
Speaker 1: directly in a way they can't at big campaign rallies,
Speaker 1: and that's valuable in India, where there are some nine
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight million eligible voters.
Speaker 2: The level of hyper personalization that is possible with generative AI.
Speaker 2: You can just train the model to say the main
Speaker 2: message and then feed it with house and thousands of
Speaker 2: memes and it will instantly reproduce that same video and
Speaker 2: sync it perfectly with Narenermodi calling out each person by name.
Speaker 1: The videos are so good, Sarita says, it can be
Speaker 1: very difficult to discern their deep fakes, especially in a
Speaker 1: country where technological literacy varies so widely.
Speaker 2: These are millions and millions who have their first encounter
Speaker 2: of any technological device because they have access to a
Speaker 2: cheap smartphone. They're the ones who have never experienced the
Speaker 2: Internet except for experiencing it or accessing it through this
Speaker 2: device for the first time in the last few years.
Speaker 2: So the kind of impact that AI would have in
Speaker 2: India is certainly magnified because people are so much more
Speaker 2: vulnerable to the kind of deceptions that AI can be
Speaker 2: used for. I think that really is the power of
Speaker 2: these AI technologies colliding with the ubiquity of smartphones and
Speaker 2: the cheap broadband in a country like India where otherwise
Speaker 2: it would be a really expensive exercise to get out
Speaker 2: and get the message to the waters.
Speaker 1: You said that he can work quickly and it's not
Speaker 1: extremely expensive.
Speaker 2: I'd certainly say it's peanuts compared with what physical campaigning
Speaker 2: will cost some of these politicians. For instance, if Modi
Speaker 2: flies is a private plane to get to a remote
Speaker 2: corner of the country, here morey can address all of
Speaker 2: those voters with a deep faith personalized, hyper personalized message
Speaker 2: for a few for maybe six or seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Are you able to ascertain the effect that this kind
Speaker 1: of technology is having and indeed it is likely to
Speaker 1: have on the election?
Speaker 2: Elections were a magical time when all kinds of performers,
Speaker 2: all kinds of theater, all kinds of stuff came by
Speaker 2: onto your neighborhood because that was part of the whole,
Speaker 2: as we call it in India, the election tamasha, which
Speaker 2: is the election theater, almost very theatrical stuff. But when
Speaker 2: I look out today outside in my neighborhood, there's hardly
Speaker 2: any visible sign of an election that is coming up.
Speaker 2: And in fact Bangalore where I'm based, is going to
Speaker 2: vote in a few days, and there is absolutely no
Speaker 2: sign of any large scale campaigning or any overt display
Speaker 2: of election material. There are no banners, there are no posters,
Speaker 2: there is nothing of that sort, which was literally what
Speaker 2: it used to be like plastered all over the streets,
Speaker 2: hung on the buildings and everything. None of it. None
Speaker 2: of that is happening today. What I and I see
Speaker 2: that this is a change that technology is bringing about
Speaker 2: that a lot of the campaigning David is going to
Speaker 2: be really personalized, in fact hyper personalized to the electors.
Speaker 1: On Friday, India began seven rounds of phased voting. The
Speaker 1: election will continue until June first, and we expect to
Speaker 1: learn the outcome three days after that. Mody expects to
Speaker 1: be re elected and Jadoun is anticipating a lot of
Speaker 1: his work will come days before voting opens. In tighter
Speaker 1: state races.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is going to reach them via
Speaker 2: their funds, and a lot of it will be AI
Speaker 2: generated material.
Speaker 1: After the break. The challenges of regulating the technology behind
Speaker 1: deep fase not just in India but all over the world.
Speaker 1: The explosive growth of generative AI and its potential have
Speaker 1: made it a challenge to regulate its proponents, to out
Speaker 1: its potential to boost productivity and, in the case of elections,
Speaker 1: to reach more voters. But its critics note its pitfalls
Speaker 1: in an age of heightened disinformation and concerns about cybersecurity,
Speaker 1: and when it comes to regulation, many governments are unable
Speaker 1: or reluctant to move fast in the technologies infancy. In
Speaker 1: the US, AI legislation is tied up in Congress. The
Speaker 1: UK is also debating legislation. China does have rules in
Speaker 1: place for AI companies, but there's little transparency into how
Speaker 1: they work in practice. The European Union has passed some
Speaker 1: of the most comprehensive regulations. These could be a blueprint
Speaker 1: for lawmakers everywhere. Last year, it adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act,
Speaker 1: which placed reporting requirements and restrictions on how companies operating
Speaker 1: in the EU are able to develop and use AI.
Speaker 1: Blomberg's Gillian Deutsch covered the debate over that law from Brussels.
Speaker 3: I think the best way to look at the way
Speaker 3: the use approaching it is to see that they're not
Speaker 3: really regulating the technology itself. The regulating the uses of
Speaker 3: the technology. They're required to submit risk assessments to your opinion,
Speaker 3: and then these kind of more very serious harms pushed
Speaker 3: by AI, for example, assigning social scores to citizens based
Speaker 3: on their behavior, or even using emotional recognition technology in
Speaker 3: the workplace or in schools, those are fed out banned
Speaker 3: in the EU. These are the kind of good enough
Speaker 3: rules to actually make sure that this kind of scary
Speaker 3: and obviously very promising technology, the generative AI. Those are
Speaker 3: the correct guard rills that we should put in place.
Speaker 1: But Jillian says, in spite of how this bill is
Speaker 1: framed and it's splashy rollout, the AI Act is still
Speaker 1: limited in scope. There's disagreement over how strict regulation should be,
Speaker 1: and there's fear that regulation will stifle innovation.
Speaker 3: There's also a very kind of quick sudden pushback from
Speaker 3: countries like Germany and France saying actually that those are
Speaker 3: too many rules and actually Europe is going to shoot
Speaker 3: itself in the foot. We are the first allegates to
Speaker 3: place really kind of what we view is very strict
Speaker 3: requirements on genetic A companies. They will just go elsewhere.
Speaker 3: They're not going to invest on this continent. And we
Speaker 3: also need to gain the benefits of AI, not just
Speaker 3: over regulate based on the concerns. So what ended up
Speaker 3: happening is really we have more basic transparency requirements.
Speaker 1: Other countries are studying Europe's approach, but many of them
Speaker 1: are calling on companies to self regulate. I asked reporter
Speaker 1: Sareita Rye about this. What is the regulatory landscape when
Speaker 1: it comes to AI look like in India today?
Speaker 2: India has no regulation at all when it comes to AI.
Speaker 2: Certainly there have been attempts to regulate deep fakes on
Speaker 2: social media. That's kind of a roundabout way of getting there.
Speaker 2: What India's government has done is asked social media platforms
Speaker 2: such as Facebook and Google to regulate their own platforms.
Speaker 2: The government has told these platforms that when these deep
Speaker 2: fakes or AI generated content hits these platforms and people
Speaker 2: bring it to their notice, they have only twenty four
Speaker 2: hours to take the content down.
Speaker 1: Representatives from Meta Alphabet and other tech companies say they're
Speaker 1: trying to address AI's potential problems. Jillian says, experts assert
Speaker 1: it's hard to know how big a role deep fakes
Speaker 1: will play in determining the outcome of elections in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 3: We don't want to overemphasize how widespread or how impactful
Speaker 3: de fakes are, but it obviously has captured a lot
Speaker 3: of people's attention because this is something very new. It's
Speaker 3: much cheaper to make, they're much faster to make, they're
Speaker 3: much more sophisticated than they used to be, and they
Speaker 3: don't have to influence every single person in a country.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of these governments, all of these
Speaker 3: elections are decided on very small percentile differences.
Speaker 1: For the time being, voters will need to bring a
Speaker 1: critical eye to everything they see online. Jillian points out
Speaker 1: some deep fakes are harder to detect as fakes than others.
Speaker 1: Many videos still have telltale signs. There could be too
Speaker 1: many fingers on someone's hand, or inconsistencies and how clothing
Speaker 1: or accessories look.
Speaker 3: Audio deep figs are even trickier to identify. We have
Speaker 3: far fewer social cues to see that it's in correct,
Speaker 3: or that it's been faked.
Speaker 1: Soretha says this played out in New Hampshire during the
Speaker 1: run up to the presidential primaries there in January.
Speaker 2: Robocalls using voice cloning technology impersonating Biden asking to vote
Speaker 2: for a candidate that certainly he wasn't endorsing.
Speaker 1: Increasingly, deep fakes are being seen as a serious disinformation threat.
Speaker 1: There is a fear about how this technology could be
Speaker 1: used or exploited in American politics. Is there the same
Speaker 1: apprehension or anxiety in India about the way that this
Speaker 1: is being used or could be used, or is there
Speaker 1: just a fascination with kind of the whizbang nature of this.
Speaker 2: Certainly, I think the world over there are apprehensions of
Speaker 2: about how these defates can be used to fool or
Speaker 2: deceive voters. He's seen it happen in multiple countries, right
Speaker 2: from Indonesia to Pakistan and even in the US.
Speaker 1: But deep fake creators like Diveandra Jadun see opportunity. Sarita says,
Speaker 1: his business is booming. Does he have designs or a
Speaker 1: desire to take this work to other countries and get
Speaker 1: involved in other countries politics.
Speaker 2: Divindras told me that He has agents working for him
Speaker 2: in multiple countries, such as Canada, which is going to
Speaker 2: an election in twenty twenty five. I think he certainly
Speaker 2: is ambitious. India has always been known for technology services outsourcing,
Speaker 2: but AI and election deep fake outsourcing may now see
Speaker 2: a new lease of life with the likes of Viviendra
Speaker 2: and this might be a new type of outsourcing. So
Speaker 2: I think he's building a new business model.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was produced by Alex Sagura. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Aaron Edwards and Tom O'Sullivan. It was mixed by
Speaker 1: Veronica Rodriguez. It was fact checked by David Fox. Naomi
Speaker 1: Shavin is our senior producer. Elizabeth Ponso is our senior editor.
Speaker 1: Nicole Beemster Bor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is
Speaker 1: our head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big
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