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BJP’s Push For 'Sanatan Influencers' To Make Ayodhya Viral

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You must have come across several Instagram reels or YouTube videos on the recently inaugurated Ram Mandir. Some of these content creators, who were barely known, now get several well-paid collaborations with brands. Read on to know how!

🚀 Join the conversation against AI misuse

Deepfake Watch is an initiative by Decode, dedicated to keeping you abreast of the latest developments in AI and its potential for misuse. Our goal is to foster an informed community capable of challenging digital deceptions and advocating for a transparent digital environment. We invite you to join the conversation, share your experiences, and contribute to the collective effort to maintain the integrity of our digital landscape. Together, we can build a future where technology amplifies truth, not obscures it.

🔖 Several celebrities have been calling out deepfakes being created of them with many of them apparently endorsing some app or the other.

BOOM has previously reported on similar such fraud ads that used Artificial Intelligence (AI) and were using voice clones of Shah Rukh Khan, Virat Kohli, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Narayana Murthy, etc to scam Indian users on Facebook.

So, what can you do to spot deepfakes? 

  • Look for inconsistencies in the image or video. See if there are mismatches in facial features.

  • Try to spot red flags like audio-visual mismatches.

  • Is the image or video too good to be true or too bad to be true? Well, then there are high chances of it not being true at all.

Sachin Tendulkar Called Out A Deepfake Video. How To Spot Deepfakes? | Skyward Aviator Quest | BOOM

P.S. It's not just celebrities who can be targeted, it could be YOU too. So, tighten your online privacy settings. The less data you have out there, the harder it is for someone to create a deepfake of you.

How BJP Cultivated 'Sanatan Influencers' To Make Ayodhya Viral

🔖 On 22 January, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with several guests attended the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, 29-year-old Ashish Mishra was there too, as a volunteer of the media management department. His post of a video of the Ram idol on Instagram has garnered over 2 million views.

Content creators, who were barely known, now get several well-paid collaborations with brands and recognition by tourism ministries of BJP-led state governments.

Read about the BJP’s push for ‘Sanatan influencers’ in Shantasree Sarkar’s report.

NHAI's 'One Vehicle, One FASTag': Toll Reform Or Privacy Red Flag?

🔖 In a bid to tackle instances of multiple FASTags being linked to a single vehicle, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has introduced the 'One Vehicle, One FASTag' initiative. The Authority has mandated citizens to undergo the Know Your Customer (KYC) process and complete tagging by 31 January 2024 to prevent deactivation.

However, the move also raises concerns over the potential escalation of surveillance in the country. Decode’s Hera Rizwan spoke to experts to explore whether the initiative was necessary in the first instance and how this obligation might jeopardize citizens' privacy rights, beyond fulfilling its intended purpose.

Taylor Swift's Deepfakes: How Is Twitter Dealing With AI Images?

🔖 Social media platform X has restricted searches for Taylor Swift following the emergence of explicit images of the singer generated using artificial intelligence on the platform.

As verified by BOOM’s Hera Rizwan, searches for "Taylor Swift" and "Taylor Swift AI" on X result in a message saying, "Oops, something went wrong".

Nevertheless, searches such as "Taylor Swift Photos" and "Taylor Swift singer" still yield results.

Bombay HC Delivers Split Verdict On Centre's Fact Checking Unit

🔖 The Bombay High Court on 31 January delivered a split verdict on pleas challenging the Centre’s Fact Checking Unit under the Information and Technology Rules, 2023 which determined what news is fake, false or misleading.

BOOM’s Ritika Jain recaps the split opinions.

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🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍A video showing a group of people violently assaulting a few unarmed people with sticks went viral with the claim that it shows Muslims entering the home of a Hindu family in Alwar, Rajasthan, and beating them up. Read 🔗Archis Chowdhury’s↗️ fact-check to find out the truth.

🔍A video of a railway track laying machine in use for the East Coast Rail Link project in Malaysia, which is a joint venture between Malaysia and China, was shared on social media falsely claiming it is from India showing an under-construction railway track by the Indian Railways. 🔗Anmol Alphonso↗️ debunked the claim.

🔍A video of a woman dancing to Jubin Nautiyal's song Mere Ghar Ram Aaye Hain went viral viral with captions misidentifying her as the former District Collector of Sambalpur, Odisha, Ananya Das. Read 🔗Swasti Chatterjee’s↗️ fact-check to find out who she actually is.

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🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: An AI-Generated Content Empire Is Spreading Fake Celebrity Images on Google by Matthew Gault and Jordan Pearson

An excerpt from the article reads: "A website using AI to squat on valuable virtual real estate is emblematic of an emerging issue online: human-made sources of information are at risk of being displaced, with potential revenue being vacuumed up by shoddy machine-generated content."

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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose

and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

If you have suggestions about this newsletter or want us to conduct workshops on specific topics, drop us a line at 👉 [email protected] and we will get back to you in a jiffy. Thanks for reading. See you next week.👋

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