Open AI, the creators of ChatGPT and Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp has said that they have acted on content which is being used to influence Indian elections and further Khalistani propaganda.
OpenAI highlighted in their report “AI and Covert Influence Operations: Latest Trends” that they disrupted activities of an Israeli commercial company, STOIC which was involved in generating content related to the Gaza conflict and Indian elections.
Initially targeting audiences in Canada, the US, and Israel with content in English and Hebrew, STOIC shifted its focus to India in early May, generating English-language web articles and social media comments critical of the ruling BJP party and supportive of the opposition Congress party.
OpenAI stated, “in May, we disrupted some activity focused on the Indian elections less than 24 hours after it began.”
The report added, “the network began generating comments that focused on India, criticized the ruling BJP party and praised the opposition Congress party.”
Simultaneously, Meta’s “Adversarial Threat Report” revealed the removal of multiple accounts linked to a network originating in China supporting Khalistani propaganda. Meta’s report said it removed “37 Facebook accounts, 13 Pages, five Groups, and nine accounts on Instagram for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
The network targeted the global Sikh community across various countries, including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, the UK, and Nigeria.
The operation “used compromised and fake accounts – some of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems prior to our investigation – to pose as Sikhs, post content and manage Pages and Groups” and “appeared to have created a fictitious activist movement called Operation K which called for pro-Sikh protests, including in New Zealand and Australia”.
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The report said that “they posted primarily in English and Hindi about news and current events, including images likely manipulated by photo editing tools or generated by artificial intelligence, in addition to posts about floods in the Punjab region, the Sikh community worldwide”, Khalistani terrorism, killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and “criticism of the Indian government.”
The scale of the operation was relatively limited, with about 2,700 accounts following one or more of the affected Facebook Pages, 1,300 accounts joining the Groups, and fewer than 100 accounts following the Instagram profiles. Meta emphasised that “we found and removed this activity early, before it was able to build an audience among authentic communities.”