A recent report has revealed that STOIC, a political campaign management firm based in Israel, generated anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and pro-Congress content during India’s Lok Sabha election 2024. This operation, dubbed ‘Zero Zeno’, was aimed to disrupt the electoral process by spreading political ‘propaganda’, OpenAI has revealed.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, reported that STOIC used their platforms conducting propaganda activities. The firm leveraged its capabilities to create and disseminate content that targeted the BJP and promoted the Congress party (India’s largest opposition party). The content was aimed at influencing public opinion and potentially disrupting the election process.
OpenAI’s report, titled “AI and Covert Influence Operations: Latest Trends,” details how cyberspace actors leverage artificial intelligence to manipulate public sentiment. This move has raised concerns about foreign interference in India’s democratic process.
“We nicknamed this operation Zero Zeno, for the founder of the stoic school of philosophy. The people behind Zero Zeno used our models to generate articles and comments posted across multiple platforms, notably Instagram, Facebook, X, and websites associated with this operation,” it said.
According to OpenAI, it blocked a number of Israeli-operated accounts that were being used to generate and modify content for an influence campaign across X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, websites, and YouTube platforms. “This operation targeted audiences in Canada, the United States (US) and Israel with English and Hebrew-language. Also, It started targeting audiences in India with English-language content in early May.”
Reacting to the report, BJP Minister of State for Electronics and Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar took his concern to X and wrote, “It is absolutely clear and obvious that @BJP4India was and is the target of influence operations, misinformation and foreign interference, being done by and/or on behalf of some Indian political parties.This is very dangerous threat to our democracy. It is clear vested interests in India and outside are clearly driving this and needs to be deeply scrutinized/investigated and exposed. My view at this point is that these platforms could have released this much earlier, and not so late when elections are ending.”
The Lok Sabha 2024 elections are currently underway in the country.
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