One in four Indians found political material to be deeply fake: Report

New Delhi: According to a new survey released on Thursday, 22% of Indians said they had lately come across political material that they subsequently found to be deepfake.

About 75% of Indians, according to cyber security firm McAfee, have come across deepfake content. Of these, 44% are concerned about deepfakes that use artificial intelligence (AI) to impersonate public figures, 37% want to undermine public confidence in the media, and 31% want to influence elections.

“Deepfake material featuring public and private people has increased in India in an unprecedented way in recent times. Pratim Mukherjee, senior director of engineering at McAfee, said, “The ease with which AI can manipulate voices and visuals raises critical questions about the authenticity of content, particularly during a critical election year.”

In January and February of this year, 7,000 customers worldwide were polled for the research, including those in the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, India, and Japan.

The paper identified many worrisome possible applications of deepfakes, including cyberbullying (represented by 55%), fabricating fake pornographic material (52%), aiding fraud (49%), and falsifying historical information (27%).

About 64% of respondents said that AI has made it more difficult for them to recognize online fraud.

A third of people lost money to fraud, and around 57% believed a video, picture, or audio of a celebrity to be authentic.

According to Mukherjee, “consumers must exercise caution, be proactive, stay informed, and protect themselves against misinformation, disinformation, and deepfake scams.”