At a time when everyone is talking about using AI for driving efficiencies, Maharashtra’s political parties have lost the enthusiasm to use generative AI for their election campaigning. According to Opposition parties like the Nationalist Congress Party - Sharadchandra Pawar (NCP SP) and the Indian National Congress, social media interaction reaps much better results than AI-content. Still, the Congress said that AI helps in speeding up other modes of campaigning.

Earlier, media reports talked about how parties like NCP - Ajit Pawar faction used AI-generated ads for the upcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had also used AI images when campaigning for Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh but received criticism from the public for doing so. However, Shivam Singh, Director of the Strategic Innovation Group for Narrative Landscapes (SIGNAL) Institute that uses AI-driven insights to build campaigns, told businessline that more than criticism, AI-driven campaigns fail to have any significant impact on elections.

“Use of technology is very effective in elections but it depends what technology is used with what intent. AI is not very effective in election campaigning. Normal campaigning works just as good as AI campaigning. This is something that was borne out in US elections where everyone raised a lot of fear about AI being misused but there wasn’t much deep fake content in the end,” said Singh.

Singh addedthat rather than content, AI prevails in AI-based sentiment analytics. This notion was reinforced by Vaibhav Walia, Congress Communications Secretary, who said the party has slowed down AI usage in state elections.

“In Lok Sabha, the Congress tried using AI-generated photos and videos but we’re not doing that for Assembly elections. We didn’t find it that transformative or that people are liking it. Machine learning is useful in analysing people’s behaviour patterns, look-alike patterns. We use AI to make IVR [Interactive Voice Response] calls more interactive by helping prepare responses to what people might say during the call and for writing copies for social media posts,” Walia told businessline, adding that he didn’t find AI-generated content useful for campaigning.

Similarly, Clyde Crasto, national spokesperson, NCP SP, said that social media remains the most powerful form of technology for elections.

“Basically the main technological medium for campaigning is social media like X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. AI can always be misused. So it’s better we go organic. Technology is good but it can also be bad,” Crasto told businessline.

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