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Comment by dilawar | Hacker News Reader

Recently in India, a politician deepfaked the voice to deliver his speech in multiple languages [1]. Can't comment on the quality of tech since i dont speak this language but it is pretty alarming to me. 2% vote swings make a huge difference in Indian politics since there are many regional parties. Almost more than 2/3rd of Indian voters didn't vote for modi yet his party is doing very well.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/18/21142782/india-politician...

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I think this is one of the cases where there is nothing wrong with using deepfakes. The person mimicked gave explicit consent and they did not do any harm with the tool. If technology increases accessibility of true political choice then it's good technology.

That said, I don't understand why the parent and the article paint this as a bad thing.

When language is tightly coupled to cultural identity, using this kind of fake is lying to voters, saying, "I'm one of you."

It's a new use of technology to repeat an old lie. I think it's a bad thing, but it's hardly the most dangerous and novel application of this technology for evil.

Had he used a translator, it would have been more obvious but possibly had the same effect (if what he had to say resonated with the voters). So what you are against is the idea that it’s not labeled as “virtual translator was used to produce this speech”?

Certainly that's the impression I had from the comment - it's a politician being dishonest, and an undemocratic system which gives non-proportional power.

Given that the PR firm who made their video apparently reached out to the press to tell the story, it seems that he wasn't actually claiming or pretending to be a native speaker (and anybody who did would be extremely easy to uncover). Just using a glorified overdub service and being quite upfront about it.

Interesting. Providing a translation is an accessibility measure, but it seems that the "fake" here is matching his lip movements to the translation. Almost not worthy of calling it a fake since he (not somebody else) did say those things (in a different language), and it's endorsed by him.

The unendorsed version is far more dangerous.

The pope reads in phonetic alphabet to speak a big number of languages and most people do not consider it cheating. I do not se the problem.

>>Almost more than 2/3rd of Indian voters didn't vote for modi yet his party is doing very well.

Do you understand what is first-past-the-post voting system?

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