By Moazam Jahangir

In the ever-twisting, ever-turning digital maze of our time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has stepped up its game from a mere tech whiz kid to a full-blown revolutionary force. Gone are the days when it was all about crunching numbers and playing chess; now, we're talking about a tech prodigy mimicking the human brain. Deepfakes, the crown jewel in AI's rapidly expanding empire, are stirring up a storm in every corner of our digital world. It's as if AI, echoing the famous phrase of Aladdin's Genie, observed the intricacies of the human mind and declared, "Your wish is my command."

Let's take a closer dive into the world of deepfakes and their astonishingly hyper-realistic digital antics that blur the lines between what's real and what's fabricated. These digital illusions, emerging from AI's inferno, cast a daunting shadow over our trust in media, especially in the volatile world of politics. Think of deepfakes as digital puppet masters, with the awful power to manipulate elections, and shape public opinion. It's a shockingly surreal reality where what you see might just be the clever trickery of a few lines of code!

In the grand circus of Pakistani politics, where the stage is ever set for the next act of high drama, entered AI, not as a mere understudy but as a potential star threatening to steal the spotlight. Picture it: not just digital doubles in debates but entire campaigns smeared with the brush of technological deceit. This isn't just about a cloned voice rallying the troops; it's about fabricating a reality so convincing that it blurs the lines between fact and fiction. For instance, our main character Mr. Imran Khan Niazi, the famous cricketer-turned-politician, and Pakistan's ousted PM, turned tech wizard by using deepfake technology to deliver a speech from jail. Yes, you heard that right. Locked up on serious charges and barred from office, Khan wasn't about to let a little thing like prison walls silence him. Through the magic of AI, his social media team used his voice, crafted from notes, and fed into some fancy tech, to reach his supporters before the General Elections in 2024. Grammar issues aside, it's groundbreaking, or maybe just ground-shaking for democracy where anything can be spread like wildfire in a digital world of Instagram and TikTok reels.

Before unfolding the May 9, 2023 events, we must turn a keen eye to the global stage where AI's role in politics, especially the rise and impact of deepfakes, is nothing short of a game-changer. Take the United States, for instance, a deepfake video of Joe Biden popped up, painting him in less than flattering colors. The way it zipped across the internet. You'd think it was a cat video, not a piece of AI-generated fiction. And let's not forget our friend in Turkey, President Erdogan. He jumped on the deepfake bandwagon, using a doctored video to throw shade at his rival. It's like watching a chess game where deepfakes are the queens – very powerful and sneaky. It's not just politics anymore; it's politics with a pinch of sci-fi thriller, leaving us all wondering, What's next?

The ‘May 9’ events (infamously known as 9/5) emerged as a haunting chapter in Pakistan, and a perfect case study of how AI-Powered propaganda can shape political realities?. This dark comedy starts when Imran Khan was arrested on £190m corruption charges. His supporters decided to throw the mother of all tantrums. In a spectacular show of 'distressing protest', they didn't just get mad, they got theatrical, storming the public transports,  monuments honoring the armed forces and martyrs, state-run Radio Pakistan, and major military installations – nothing was sacred. This spectacle was almost a doppelgänger of the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill fiasco in Washington D.C., except, more intense and destructive. If Capitol Hill was a blockbuster movie, this was the sequel that tried way too hard to outdo the original.

Beneath the surface of all this political upheaval and chaos, there lurked a more sinister player: The Deepfake images. Since Khan's dramatic exit from the Prime Minister's office, deepfakes have slinked into the spotlight, becoming a devious instrument of deception, fuelling the flames of public outrage and ambiguity.

Talk about a plot twist straight out of a political thriller! Picture this: an image, named 'صنف آہن' )a woman of steel), stands in bold defiance against riot police. Within a few hours, it quickly became the poster child of resistance, striking a chord with the masses thirsty for retribution against those who dethroned their Messiah, Imran Khan. This image spread like wildfire across social media, igniting the flames of what some dramatically called “La Révolution.” But wait for the shocker – this emblem of defiance was nothing more than a deepfake, a cunningly crafted illusion tailored to stir emotions and distort public opinion.

The moment France24's journalist Vedika Bahl pulled back the curtain, revealing the image's true nature, it was like a scene from a spy movie where the hero discovers the villain's grand deception. This image was just a starter, a sea of deepfakes surged across the internet, igniting the fervour of already incensed supporters. This episode wasn't just a revelation; it was as if we were living in a chapter from political theorist Steven Luke’s playbook on power dynamics – a remarkable example of how desires and beliefs can be engineered, showing just how deep and treacherous the waters of political meddling can get.

In a move that was anything but spontaneous, Imran Khan had been laying the groundwork for this rebellion well before the chaos of May 9. Let's rewind to April 9, 2022, when he lost a confidence vote in Parliament. Far from admitting defeat, Khan turned up the heat, boycotted the parliament with his MPs, and instilling a fiery zeal in his supporters. He stood before them, not just as a leader, but as a “Messiah”, (Yes, Jim Jones 2.0) rallying them with promises of fighting for "real freedom”, and using religious card by likening their struggle to a sacred “Jihad,” it as some grand holy battle against the evil state. And let's not ignore the nostalgic half-raised arms at his rallies, a scary resonance of Nazi Germany's infamous salute. It's as if subtlety took a holiday, leaving his campaign with a rather sinister and melodramatic flair. ‘Hail Führer Niazi!’

However, the fallout of the May 9 attacks was like something out of a political thriller: Imran the “Handsome” Khan, once the darling of millions, was suddenly trapped in legal and ethical dilemmas, going from the glamorous limelight to solitary confinement with serious charges. A clear illustration of how quickly heroes can become villains in the unpredictable theatre of politics if the use of AI’s campaign backfires.

The May 9 saga is an alarming reminder about the influence of AI and deepfakes in politics, a real eye-opener to the blending of technology and truth. It's a nudge (or more like a shove) towards critical thinking and digital literacy in an age where AI's illusions are becoming hard to distinguish from reality. As participants in this digital age, it's a call for us to sharpen our skills in discerning fact from fiction. It's a reminder that if we're not careful, our political discourse might just become the next big tech spectacle.