India’s election was ripe for a crisis of AI misinformation. It didn’t happen.

You might need only one truly believable deepfake to stir up violence or defame a political rival, but ostensibly, none of the ones in India has seemed to have had that effect. The closest India got was when footage of India’s home minister, Amit Shah, falsely claiming to abolish affirmative action for lower castes prompted arrests and threats of violence. Some outlets misreported the clip as a deepfake, but it had just been edited. In part, deepfakes haven’t panned out because of the technology itself: The videos and images were not that high-quality, and audio clips, although they sometimes crossed the uncanny valley, were run through detection tools from companies such as Contrails.ai.

This essay for The Atlantic recounted all things AI and politics that unfolded in the six-week long Indian elections, and the lessons it holds for the United States elections in November.

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