DeepfakeHigh
BJP Used Deepfake Videos of Manoj Tiwari to Target Haryanvi Voters in 2020 Delhi Election
- Occurred
- Feb 7, 2020
- Published
- Feb 18, 2020
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
In February 2020, India's BJP used purported deepfake videos of party leader Manoj Tiwari to influence voters in the Delhi legislative election. The videos reportedly showed Tiwari delivering scripted campaign messages in Haryanvi and English, which are languages he did not speak, by altering his lip movements and voice. Distributed via thousands of WhatsApp groups, the deepfakes reportedly reached millions of voters without disclosure.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- The Ideaz Factory
- Information manipulation actors
- BJP Delhi IT Cell
- Information manipulation actors in India
Harmed parties
- Manoj Tiwari
- General public of India
- General public
- Epistemic integrity
- Democratic integrity
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Deepfake videos were used to deceive voters in an election, constituting a significant harm to democratic processes.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8