CEC:‘Deep fake’ narratives being served as fact, impacting polls

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar on Monday raised concerns over “deep fake narratives” becoming a common feature in elections worldwide with “disruptive elements” attempting to alter and mislead public perception by presenting “deep fakes as fact”.

In his keynote address at the ECI’s two-day international conference on ‘Use of Technology & Elections Integrity’, the CEC underlined the impact of social media on the functioning of election management bodies and the need for the former to proactively check the spread of fake information. The CEC said there was no level playing field in platform search results with officially verified versions often not getting the same prominence as fake content.

He pointed to the “trend” to discredit the EVM technology and how fake news on EVM hacking was wrongly attributed to former CEC T S Krishnamurthy which keeps getting circulated before every election despite his denial.


The CEC urged social media intermediaries to deploy their algorithm power and AI to proactively detect the deep fakes, especially in countries like India with well-defined election cycles.