Deepfake on duty

I told Grok to look at Op Sindoor-related gallantry award citations, and found that AI promises facts but can make them up. It’s taking fake news toa different level, and it has been fully gamed

- SHEKHAR GUPTA

You can read this piece as an opinion, as a war film script, or as a news story, told with a depth and granularity you've never found elsewhere. I will take the suspense away and plead with you to do no such thing. This is opinion piece, and the upshot is stated in just one word: Caution. Or maybe two: Caveat emptor (buyer beware).

The gallantry awards for Operation Sindoor were announced on the eve of Independence Day. Fifteen Vir Chakras (VrCs), 58 Sena Medals, 26 Vayu Sena Medals, and five Nao Sena Medals for gallantry, and an aggregate of 290 Mention-in-Despatches (Mi-Ds). The missing chapter in the story was the citations.

That wait ended late on the night of October 21 when a buzz went up across newsrooms that the Government of India had released the full list of decorations with citations.

Thad to stop watching the Women’s World Cup cricket match, as an important story had broken late and I also remembered that our defence editor was in China — bad time zone, worse for military talk. Nevertheless, Icalled him on Signal at 2:30 am his time. We were both unable to open the gazette notification link. Usual Bharat Sarkar internet, Ithought.

So I did the next best thing, putan artificial intelligence (AI) caddy onthe job. Comeon Grok, read up all the citations in the gazetteand bringthem tome. It took me into an ever-ending rabbit hole that, to be honest, delight that kept sinking deeper and deeper. It made for an incredible story and I was intrigued that nobody in the Indian media seemed tohave picked this up.

‘A couple of questions, however, came up. Since when did the government start releasing so much in its citations? Did someone slip up?I called our defence editor again and told him some highlights. Is it for real?

‘And then he gave mea good piece of advice, to screenshot it all. I screen-shotted about three metres.

Here are the juiciest of the highlights from these citations that Grok produced for me: