In a first, BJP leader used AI-generated videos during campaigning

Synthesized with deep neural networks, deepfakes are clips that show the face of one person in another one's video.

The videos are created with so realism that one can easily make a person, be it a celebrity or politician, say something that they wouldn't normally do.

The system also works on audio files where spoken words can be replaced with something completely unrelated.

In this case, Vice reports, Tiwari used the deepfake tech to transform one of his speeches on NRC into campaign videos criticizing Kejriwal.

"[Kejriwal] cheated us on the basis of promises. But now Delhi has a chance to change it all. Press the lotus button on February 8 to form the Modi-led government," Tiwari can be seen saying in one of the fabricated clips.

While both deepfake videos show Tiwari at the same location as that used in the original, his speech content, voice, and lip-movement have been modified to such realism that one easily consider the videos real.

Also, in the original clip, he speaks in Hindi, but the fabricated ones show him speaking in English and Haryanvi - a move clearly aimed at reaching more voters.

Tiwari's deepfakes have been created by The Ideaz Factory, a political communications firm that BJP had partnered with for creating "positive campaigns" to reach voters speaking different languages.

"We used a 'lip-sync' deepfake algorithm and trained it with speeches of Manoj Tiwari to translate audio sounds into basic mouth shapes," Sagar Vishnoi of The Ideaz Factory said while detailing their video-fabrication technique.

The fake clips, largely aimed at dissuading Haryanvi-speaking migrants from voting for Kejriwal's party, were distributed across more than 5,000 WhatsApp groups in Delhi NCR, reaching as many as 15 million people.

"The Haryanvi videos let us convincingly approach the target audience even if the candidate didn't speak the language of the voter," Neelkant Bakshi, the co-in-charge of IT for BJP Delhi, told Vice.

Even though Tiwari's video was part of a campaign and completely innocuous, the realism of the clip shows how effectively deepfake tech can alter videos to spread misinformation and mislead people.

Today, we are at a stage when any tech-savvy person can use this tech to fabricate a celebrity/politician's video and make them say something controversial, which could turn the public against them.