Delhi Police appoints a Joint Commissioner to check AI misuse on social media ahead of poll

The Delhi police on Wednesday appointed a nodal officer to monitor social media for potential misuse of Artificial Intelligence ahead of the February 5 Assembly election. Joint Commissioner of Police (Special Branch) Vikramjit Singh has been tasked with identifying deepfake videos and misleading messages shared on social media applications and websites, said the police.

The JCP will be aided by a team of officers and the software required to track election-related content in real time, said the police.

However, speaking about the regulation of such content, a senior officer said that a lot more needs to be done to prevent the spread of misinformation online.

“To deal with the rapidly evolving technology, we need trained manpower and interactive tools, which are difficult to acquire. Moreover, social media intermediaries are registered abroad. So, to deal with even a single case of deepfake content, we have to follow foreign laws and policy structures,” the officer said.

The role of AI in political campaigns became a major talking point last month, when the ruling Aam Aadmi Party posted an AI-generated deepfake video of B.R. Ambedkar supposedly blessing party national convener Arvind Kejriwal, prompting an AI-generated response from the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.