The Narendra Modi government frequently posits India as a ‘Vishwaguru’ or world leader. How the world sees India is often lost in this branding exercise.
Outside India, global voices are monitoring and critiquing human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva. We present here monthly highlights of what a range of actors – from UN experts and civil society groups to international media and parliamentarians of many countries – are saying about the state of India’s democracy.
A report by the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate (a think-tank based in Washington DC), entitled AI-Generated Imagery and the New Frontier of Islamophobia, studies the use of artificial intelligence to produce “anti-Muslim visual hate content in India”. CSOH’s analysis of 1,326 AI-generated posts from 297 accounts (English and Hindi) reveals four main categories – “the sexualization of Muslim women, exclusionary and dehumanizing rhetoric, conspiratorial narratives (like ‘love-jihad’ and ‘population jihad’), and the aestheticization of violence”. Stylised and animated AI aesthetics made violent content appear “palatable, even humorous, broadening its reach among younger audiences”. The report also calls attention to the use of AI-generated imagery by Indian far-right media outlets (including OpIndia, Sudarshan News, and Panchjanya) towards “producing and amplifying synthetic hate, embedding AI-generated Islamophobia into mainstream discourse.”