BJP shared AI-generated audio clips targeting Opposition leaders in Maharashtra, says fact-checker
Hours before the Assembly polls, the party claimed that the ‘recordings’ were evidence of Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders’ involvement in an alleged Bitcoin scam.
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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...
