In a big year for elections, social media users are getting creative and political meme wars have entered the chat. 

Through artificial intelligence, sophisticated — and sometimes humorous — memes, deepfakes and outrageous voice clonings are popping up all over the internet. 

Most recently, India’s chief opposition party, the Indian National Congress, uploaded an AI-generated video parodying Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Instagram. The same day, Modi’s party pushed back with their own video. 

This social media tit for tat, through the help of artificial intelligence, is altering how people campaign for — and against — political candidates, says UMSI associate professor Joyojeet Pal, an expert on democracy, labor and misinformation. 

“This is at the inflection point of an entirely new way of conducting visual politics and arguably one that will foundationally change the way we consume multimedia artifacts  during political campaigns,” Pal says. “It will also change the way that technology companies and parties themselves manage the authentication process, since the future will require ways in which viewers will need to confirm where content is coming from, something that technology companies do a very poor job with now.” 

RELATED

Read “‘Inflection point’: AI meme wars hit India election, test social platforms” on Al Jazeera. 

Joyojeet Pal is an expert on democracy, misinformation and social media. Read more about his work by visiting his UMSI faculty profile. Attend Pal’s 2024 International conference on Social Media and Society in India.