#35- Bollywood vs. Propaganda | How Indian Cinema Called Out Manufactured Scandals - Bollywood Films Uncovered

I have a lot to say on AIA lot. There is a lot to be sad. There is so much to talk about and of course think about. That's what we do here. Lots of thinking and wondering and sharing along with all of the loving and film, film, film in here. Welcome back.

What took you so long? I've been looking for you for one or two days. Do you recognize that quote? No, seriously, although I am no Ajay bakshi phirbhi dil hai, Hindustani is everywhere I look these days. I mean in a way, as Bollywood basically predicted a lot of what we're seeing today. With a lot with a lot like AI, it's a lot like AI propaganda media can twist a story, frame an innocent person, it's dangerous, and shape what the public beliefs. In the movie everything feels loud, invisible anchors on TV, politicians on camera, very obvious bad guys.

So you can kind of see the manipulator, so to speak. Today, Persuasion has become more like a quiet engine running in the background. Instead of 1 channel screaming a narrative, you've got AI generated content that feels human and is carefully tuned to be super persuasive, algorithms boosting emotionally charged posts and massive troll networks and state sponsored accounts quietly pushing the same talking points across many platforms. If this film shows Hey TV news can be weaponized, then the Zurich Reddit scandal feels like the lab version of Hey, we can slip AI agents inside real conversations and try to change people's minds without them ever knowing it.

Oh, did I say that? Yes, yes, you heard that right. Yar no joke, AI agents inside real conversations trying to change people's minds without them even knowing it. Zurich study Reddit scandal when researchers used fake accounts and made-up personal backstories, even fabricated trauma and fabricated beliefs, all to see how well AI written comments can shift opinions on a live forum. It did not go well. Which makes one wonder, we'd like to wonder here, Wonderland, by every definition of the word here, it makes one wonder what is actually happening, already happening, if it is really that easy.

The study was shut down. So that conversation the simple researchers wanted to wonder about, think about, explore, learn about, talk about openly is now silenced. Technically, right? Not a good indication. What's so bad about talking about it? What is so dangerous about discussing it? If it's a nothing, nothing, never happened and never going to happen non issue? What is going on? What has gone on? What could go on? Uh uh, questions are not allowed, right? Curiosity killed the science experiment instead of the cat, it seems.

While you know me now they have my interest even more. I'm listening, are you? What do you hear in this situation? What is the silence silenced saying? What do you see and what none of us are allowed to see here with these topics? Let's make our own film now. Let's update the plot here. Oh, we'd like to do this. OK, the characters. All right. A team of researchers from the University of Zurich decides they want to test if AI can actually change people's minds in real online debates. Yes, let's go.

OK, they pick a Reddit thread. Subreddit. Change my view This subreddit where folks post views they're open to flipping. Like oh I think this is wrong. Convince me otherwise and real people jump in with arguments without telling anyone. Not the mods, not Reddit, not the users. These researchers spin up dozens of fake accounts powered by new, guessed it, large language models. I think early versions of ChatGPT or whatever's hot. Now here's where it gets wild. The bots don't just spit generic replies.

Oh no, Oh no, they scrape. Yeah, they scrape the original poster's history, yeah, to guess stuff like age, gender, ethnicity, location, even political leanings. Stuff that's public on Reddit maybe, but super personal. Then they craft hyper tailored responses complete with fake backstories to sound authentic. One bot pretends to be, let's just say, trauma survivor. A certain type of trauma survivor sharing personal trauma to sway a debate on consent laws. Yeah, they had a bot pretend that another bot they have act like a black man arguing against Black Lives Matters.

Counselors, experts, everyday folks. They built a whole cast of personas completely fake, tailored to look real and detailed for various specific reasons for specific topics. Over months, these bots drop over 1700 comments, engaging hundreds of real users in the back and forths. The goal? Measure? Persuasion, turns out. Turns out the AI bots were six times more effective at getting people to award that symbol of you changed my view on the subreddit. Six times more effective at changing real people's minds than actual humans.

OK, Researchers even had a draft paper bragging about it, calling it a breakthrough for understanding A is power in the wild. Yeah, that's power. But then boom, April 26th. And this is now in 2025, April 26th. Yeah, the the mods of the subreddit, the CMV subreddit, they get tipped off because, I don't know, researchers shared their draft paper somewhere and accounts that they listed anonymously were there or something. So the mods, they drop a mega post exposing it all, quote unauthorized experiment, AI bots, No disclosure, violates our rules on undisclosed AI and no bots.

Well then Reddit erupts as it does literally by design. Users feel violated like Lab Rats in their own hangout. Mods bio ethics complaints with Zurich Uni demanding no publication, demanding apologies and punishment. Zurich's Ethics Committee admits they greenlit it, but warns they ignored advice to inform participants better. Yeah, maybe. Hello. Principal investigator gets a formal slap on the wrist and uni promises tougher reviews. Reddit's chief legal officer Ben Lee jumps in on the thread. Quote deeply wrong on moral and legal levels, Violates our rules, human rights norms.

We've banned the accounts and are sending legal demands.

And of course, the academics pile on, as they tend to do. Oxford's Carissa Vilas calls it quote, manipulation and deceit. A non consenting people questioning whether why they couldn't just recruit volunteers. Users rage 'cause that's what these users do. But they have reason here. They rage about the fake trauma stories. Yeah, that was really dark and low. They feel exploitative, especially on sensitive topics, as I was sensitively trying to allude to. The researchers defended vaguely quote filling a knowledge gap on AI risks approved ethically.

But they go quiet when they are pressed. So yeah, in the end it's a perfect storm. Proves, yeah, proves AI can persuade sneakily and at large and effective scale. But yeah, they proved it. But it blows up because no one has permission. Yikes. Kind of like if the TV execs and Phirby Dilhae Hindustani got caught mid broadcast. Only way more personal and and hidden. Sounds like it was a scandal, all right. Cue the opinions, cue the victims, cue the rage. And yes, people should not be able to Lab Rats without consent.

I think that goes without saying. A weird, a violating or wrong, a messed up. But yeah, am I the only one who is starting to notice that the focus switched on to this scandal, which is very, very warranted as I said, and also important to focus on and talk about, but more importantly, successfully switched off a much bigger and more relevant and more disturbing possible scandal here? Like, bro, that was fast. The switch up, distracted, upset, rage, triggered, baited from something we probably shouldn't miss.

Uh huh. That's not good. It's that easy. It's that easy with us. Uh oh. Let's rewind the tape, shall we? Let's look at the footage from the secret camera in the purse, at what was ultimately stopped in its tracks, silenced, targeted like a giant Rhea. Hmm. What was never published? What was discovered and not shared with all of us hidden? SHHHH. What's really going on here? Behind the scenes, out of sight? Could it go deeper? Could it spread bigger? Common to common Post to post, subgroup to subgroup, platform to platform platform to media to TV to commentators to group chats, The family functions, retold, reshared, retold, re quoted, re referenced, referenced, referenced.

Again, we think oftentimes when we talk about this stuff, we think we're referencing real people, real opinions, real perspectives, real numbers, real debates, real talking points, real groups and group and groups of quote, like so-called people convincing us, persuading us, telling us what everyone is saying, what everyone knows to be true, what everyone supposedly knows to be factual, intensely right, glaringly obvious, true. Social media platforms. Vast, endless cities. Millions of voices pouring through every street, arguing, laughing, debating late into the night.

For years, that noise sounded human. But now appears something else has moved in. At first, you didn't notice these new voices. Joke, reason, empathize. They sound real. But they're not. They're AIS trained on everything we've ever posted. They learned from us, then came back to talk to us, like us. And here's the twist. News outlets start quoting them. You know, have you noticed that it's, it's here's what people are saying, they say, they declare, but those people they're quoting, they might not exist.

Those words they're quoting that they say someone said with an avatar might be synthetic words completely fake by a machine. And we talk about it in the news like it's a person or people. The loop Titans. The fake becomes the source. The source becomes somehow told as the truth. It's labeled as a source or a truth. AI teaching AI how to sound more human until the line disappears altogether. A handful of operators hidden behind screens can now launch armies of convincing digital personalities they don't need to spread lies directly.

They reshape the mood, They bend emotion. They shift entire communities without ever showing their face. Meanwhile, the real Internet, our Internet, fills with slop, right? Everyone's talking about it. You can tell the same empty phrases recycled 1000 times. Real voices drown beneath the static, and in that fog the influence hides. Silent, steady, unstoppable. This isn't science fiction anymore. It's what happens when humanity builds machines that sound just like us and then hands the machines a microphone.

All of this ratted the Zurich experiment. AI persuasion as a whole and undetectable manipulation. It's right on the line between genuine crowd wisdom, which is an issue enough without AI already based on how loudest doesn't necessarily mean wise at all. More people, even real people, also doesn't even automatically mean more wise either. In crowd delusion, in what appears to be a current and real wisdom. Famine, herd behavior, rage bait, An emperor's new clothes dynamics gets supercharged by machines instead of just humans.

All of which is legitimately bad enough and a real issue already with us actual humans. Without it. AI bots trained to be 3 to 6 times more persuasive than humans and able to mimic tone, biography and relatability escalate this already real issue. A few controlling many so-called voices that are not even voices at all.

That's how one slips from collective intelligence into collective delusion. Sound familiar to you? Sounds familiar to me. It's everywhere I look. Just me. Psychologists already know we follow the herd group. Think conformity, pressure, social proof. Everyone thinks this so it must be right. AI makes this worse because it can manufacture the herd. Bots up voting, commenting a green can create fake consensus that pressures real people to align. Because everybody's doing it. Everybody thinks it's right.

Emperor's new clothes, The artificial hive mind effect. Creating echo chambers at machine speed. Recommendation and response systems feedback what aligns with the so-called emerging consensus shutting out any dissent at all. Everyone must agree or you're downvoted or shamed or clearly wrong. Look at the bot numbers. I mean a Stampede driven by invisible synthetic fake participants. Unreal. How can this be? But just like in Berby Dil Hai Hindustani, let's up the stakes, let's up the drama, let's up the temperature.

Let's get louder, hotter, madder, enraged. Let's blow up this already big enough fire of situation. We all now appear to be in here. Let's make a bad situation worse. Enter rage babe. Mm hmm.

The biggest character in this whole new film we are now in. We know it, we touched on it and we will go into it more as we always do soon. But real quick, before we go all the way into rage bait as we will content engineered to make him mad. Anger drives comments, shares and time on the platform. Algorithms reward any engagement, positive or negative. Combined with LLMS means bots can mass produce outrage posts and replies tailored to your triggers. Ah, they can also sustain 24/7 outrage cycles.

No fatigue their butts keeping people in a permanent state of agitation. They can play both sites, stocking the fire, getting the anger and then debating rage for maximum visibility. This erodes the liberation and pushes politics and culture into mob like cycles. Quick anger, little reflection, lots of performative virtue or hatred, and what else? The Emperor's New Clothes, as we got into, is about everyone privately doubting but publicly conforming because they're afraid of looking stupid. Well, that's exactly what happens.

You see a highly upvoted take some of those upvotes or comments, maybe from bots you feel social pressure to align. Even if you're uneasy or unsure. AI generated arguments sound polished, confident and widely supported. LLM bots in the Zurich experiment were designed to feel like credible, thoughtful humans. They anchored the discussion and made opposing views feel fringe or wrong, even though the so-called consensus was partly synthetic, made-up, fake to manipulate, control and benefit. Ding Ding Ding.

So we get a digital emperor's new Klaus, right? People endorse positions because it seems like everyone else sees the Klaus, so to speak, when in fact much of that everyone is automated. Fear be fear be dil he, he. Hindustani is about media spectacle, manufactured narratives and how stories are manipulated to drive public emotion and ratings while truth and dignity get trampled. And today, today, platforms and creators chase engagement, outrage and slop win. AI let you fabricate public reaction with bots, fake accounts and synthetic comments.

Real human pain, grief, injustice, love becomes raw material for engineered campaigns. Political, commercial, ideological. Just as the film shows news channels whipping up public sentiment for profit LL miss they they drive persuasion and they can script the crowds, lines and reactions in real time. It blurs who is truly speaking and who is being spoken through. Crowd sourced wisdom turns even more fragile when the crowd includes hidden AI agents. Collective delusion and heard behavior get amplified by bots.

They can simulate consensus and repeat narratives at inhuman scale. Rage bait becomes cheaper and more targeted, locking people into cycles of anger and tribal identity. Emperor's new clothes moments multiply as people go along with AI inflated so-called majority views. Fear be delay. Hindustani gives us a warning. Media and systems prioritizing spectacle over truth and humanity. It lands harder in a world where even the crowd itself can be scripted. But this new story of ours that we're in isn't over yet, right?

#35- Bollywood vs. Propaganda | How Indian Cinema Called Out Manufactured Scandals

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