AI ethics laws and regulations, artificial intelligence legal standards and policy
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anyaberkut
As campaigning gathers pace in the Assembly polls, the war rooms of major political parties have leaned into Artificial Intelligence (AI) to get the message across in a hyper-social media world. From recreating the voices of late leaders to producing targeted content and analysing public sentiment, AI is now a mainstream campaign tool.
Take the way the Left Front used it in Kerala. When allegations surfaced about a supposed understanding with the NDA, the CPI(M) fired out an explainer reel on the LDF government’s decade-long achievements, using AI to generate the report card. Not to be outdone, BJP handles pushed viral content suggesting the CPI(M) and Congress were “two sides of the same coin”.
PR Shiva Shankar, the BJP candidate of Ernakulam Assembly constituency, said that AI was reshaping political campaigning by enabling more informed, data-led strategies. Not only did AI offer a deeper understanding of public sentiment, it brought a cost and time effective dimension to outreach, he said.
Deepak Joy, the Congress candidate from Thripunithura, said that while there is nothing inherently wrong in using AI to communicate party promises or highlight opponents’ shortcomings, it must be used carefully.
Digital drive
In Tamil Nadu, TRB Rajaa, Secretary, DMK IT Wing, said the party was actively integrating AI into its work, and found it useful. “It helps us craft digital content swiftly, analyse feedback and data, and also helps us interpret data better,” he said. However good AI gets, in politics, human intelligence will continue to be the driving force, he noted.
BJP has brought its national might to the TN polls with a central team sharing findings from its AI-powered sentiment analysis tool to help local teams create campaigns. Meanwhile, SG Suryah, State President Youth Wing, BJP TN, has a separate team working on AI strategies during these polls. His team says creating digital posters and video content is now done in minutes with the correct prompts. We also use AI for booth analysis; to automate workflows and get reports on key constituencies, he adds.
Digital marketer Shubho Sengupta says that in 2024, AI was a production tool used for faster creatives, but in 2026, it’s operating at the strategy layer — for real-time constituency sentiment, micro-targeted messaging, candidate positioning adjusted mid-campaign on live data.
While the tech is a powerful enabler, the rise of deepfakes and misinformation is a concern.
“It places greater responsibility on political parties,” DMK’s Rajaa said. “The irony is the more AI is used for content, the more premium authentic human voice becomes,” Sengupta noted.
(With inputs from Vinson Kurian and V Sajeev Kumar)
Published on March 31, 2026
