Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Amid complaints of spreading “doctored”, “misleading” and “derogatory” videos, the Election Commission (EC) on Monday asked political parties to remove “fake content” within three hours of coming to its notice.
In a communication to parties, the EC also warned against misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tools to create deepfakes that distort information while directing them to refrain from publishing and circulating such audio and videos that are “patently false, untrue or misleading”.
The parties should also refrain from posting derogatory content towards women, abstain from using children in campaigns and avoid depicting violence or harm to animals.
The latest direction came against the backdrop of circulation of a “doctored” video of Home Minister Amit Shah allegedly saying that the BJP government would scrap quotas for Dalits, tribals and OBCs. Congress has also complained against a video by the BJP, which it claims was “communal” in nature and against the party.
In the four-page communication sent to parties, EC said the use of such “manipulated, distorted, edited content” on social media platforms has the potential to “wrongfully sway voter opinions, deepen societal divisions, and erode trust in electioneering process by attacking laid out instrumentalities of the electoral steps in terms of means and material.”
Further, it said, the scale of spread of such misinformation has been observed to be dangerously unrestrained due to the availability of the option of “forwarding/re-sharing/ re-posting/ re-tweeting” on social media.
The EC asked parties to ensure that social media platforms should not disseminate any information which is “patently false, untrue or misleading” in nature and those that impersonate another person, including any information which is “synthetically created or generated or modified”.
The party also should not allow its social media handles to publish or circulate deep fake material. “Whenever such deep fake audios/videos come to the notice of political parties, they shall immediately take down the post but maximum within a period of three hours and also identify and warn the responsible person within the party,” it said.