from Hacker News

We've Just Seen the First Use of Deepfakes in an Indian Election Campaign

by rahuldottech on 2/18/20, 7:33 PM with 5 comments

• by mzz80 on 2/18/20, 11:12 PM

  This is a clear nefarious usage used to spread false information. It’s interesting to see the only one supporting this view be downvoted. It’s not clear if the downvotes are due to not fully understanding the implications or if the downvotes are for another less savory purpose.

  To have the candidate speak the language of a voting group holds significant political power in India. This is not the same as a dub. With a dub it is still relatively clear that the language is not spoken by the speaker. This is using tech to spread the false fact that a person can speak a language, when they in fact cannot.

• by djohnston on 2/18/20, 9:24 PM

  it's worth noting that it wasn't used deceptively to spread false messages, just to show the candidate speaking a different language (or dialect, my Hindi is nonexistent). Inevitably it will be used to spread actual lies, but in this case it wasn't nefarious IMO