Deepfakes or synthetic media that has been digitally manipulated including posts spreading incorrect information about the premises, ceremonial preparations and security systems are being actively reported to the policy teams of Meta as well as to X. Fake content with taglines such as “things to do on ceremony day” or “how to enter mandir”, may lead to commotion on the day of “Pran Pratishtha” on January 22, the sources said.
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“The government is actively undertaking AI-enabled sentiment analysis of social media activity and has found that nearly 30-40% of posts related to the event are spreading hate speech through foreign actors,” a person close to the matter told ET.
Cybercrime experts say they have also noticed an increase in QR code frauds purporting to collect donations for the Ram Mandir, lately.
“There has been a surge in QR code scams which are seeking donations in the name of Ram Mandir but have actually no relation to the place…these are being circulated through SMS and Whatsapp,” said Prashant Mali, a cybercrime lawyer.
“We also expect some form of deepfake media floating around for malicious or meme content, given the national pull of the event,” he added.
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AI-generated images and videos of Lord Rama are also under the government’s scanner to avoid any communal disturbance during the mega event.“Given the demographics of the state, any extremist false content, has the potential of igniting a fire,” officials said.
The UP Police Special Task Force and the UP-Intelligence unit is using AI to monitor both on-ground security and online activity with an aim to prevent the spread of hate speech or incitement of communal harm during the mega event.
“Besides on-ground security, online safety is also important to prevent communal unrest which has previously blown up in places like Gurgaon and Nuh District solely due to social media,” said one person cited above noting that “Intelligence unit shall be on their toes during the D-day.”
Facial recognition
The state government has also partnered with Staqu Technologies, which has installed 400 AI-enabled cameras in and around the mandir premises. These are designed to detect faces of criminals, fake number plates of vehicles and even drones which can identify landmines and explosives.
“Our video-analytics AI tool Jarvis can identify suspicious or violent activities among the crowd and flag criminals by matching with the government’s database of 800,000 criminals which we had digitised back in 2018,” said Atul Rai, founder, Staqu Technologies.
“Similarly, it can also identify fake number plates of vehicles by matching with the e-vahan database,” he added.
Ayodhya is already witnessing a footfall of nearly 12,000 devotees visiting for darshan and the count is expected to touch 30,000 per day after the inauguration on 22 January.
