Stupidity or an Abomination?

                                                              Stupidity or an Abomination?

This refers to a news item in today’s newspaper (The Hindu, 2025-10-23) on how the Union Government of India proposes to catch a tiger by the tail. It talks about bringing the deep fake stuff put up in social media outlets. I give below the scanned image of the news item that appears in two distinct parts but given as a single image (.jpg), hence a deep fake by itself!

The above image is a composite of two parts of an article in the newspaper. The larger one is visibly rectangular and is on page 1. The smaller one that looks like a misplaced appendix, though nearly square in shape, in the human body, is from page 10. That is, what you see is a fake, does not matter deep or shallow. The real one is as published in the paper and the “synthetic” one is what I am giving here.

You are asking me why I am putting the “synthetic” part opposite to the real part. A valid point and I would clarify. I am not doing it, but I found it in the news item under discussion here!

But, prior to that, let me state what I understand by synthetic: Anything that is produced which is beyond one’s unaided senses or effort. It is beyond what is “natural”.  That is AI, because your brain is incapable of producing the effects, and the seat of intelligence, let us take it for now, is the brain. So, every movie has to be tagged, per the ministry’s draft law, “synthetic.”

The IT minister said, “…the step we have taken is making sure that users get to know whether something is synthetic or real (my italics)”. As the whole brouhaha is about use and abuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which as far as I know has not been clearly defined, the IT minister should have avoided giving a new meaning to AI, that is, “synthetic”; even if the law is worded with “synthetic”; its opposite, then, has to be :natural” rather than “real”.

Now, getting out of wordsmithy, let us take a look at a photograph shot by a professional using a digital SLR camera. She would have adjusted the aperture, the shutter speed, the effective focal length (in the telephoto or wide angle range), colour balance and any and all other options she has at her disposal. The non-technical answer is (all the lengths given here are approximate, and from a non-professional) the depth of field may be taken as the appropriate metric.

If you took in scenery comprising a series of mountain peaks, setting the focal length at 18mm or lower, you get a wide vista, and, this is important, the depth you perceive will also be exaggerated; you would judge the peaks as much farther away than they are. Your eyes can never see what the camera shows.

Perhaps a more common experience is when watching a movie you see the wide, deep hall with a double-split, curved staircase at the end in a palatial house; here, the cameraman is using a short focal length setting. If you were to visit the site, you are bound to be disappointed: the hall is neither that wide nor that long! 

Similar tricks can be played on your mind using telephoto lens, a villain espying the hero and his girl cavorting in a wide meadow far away but can see the glitter of the eardrop the female lead has on her ears!

I truly wish to take a photograph of a cloud in the evening sky (towards the west) that is fringed by a strip of pink (the colour my eyes see), which evokes in me a sense of wonder; letting me know that the Sun is further west, revealing hidden knowledge; an instance of learning that I have not experienced often in other settings. Just suppose that a photo I capture of such a setting is appreciated as beautiful by some, just so-so by others and downright meaningless by many, is that natural beauty? It is natural to me, most definitely, at least the few times I would be enamoured of it, and then, it becomes passé, more and more “synthetic,” because I know that I adjusted my camera settings.

This is the transformation between “synthetic” and “real”, it is time dependent.

Both nylon and rayon fibres are synthetics, but while the former is unadulterated synthetic, rayon is not (unadulterated synthetic? Yes, wholly man-made from, most probably man-madechemicals). Yet, both fibres are “real”! That is why I can get a shirt or a pair of trousers stitched. The other synthetic substance that is frequently mentioned is steroids that are similar to human hormones but not extracted from humans. Hence synthetic, but synthesized by humans. Then, what do you call music that is played on a synthesizer? Obviously, synthetic!

Then, what type or nature of “synthetic” that the IT minister was referring to? I do not think he can answer that question, when he could not even meaningfully differentiate between “synthetic” and “non-synthetic”!

Any setting that produces something which is beyond one’s unaided senses should be tagged“synthetic”, in the sense it is beyond what is “natural”. That is AI, because your brain is incapable of producing the effects. So, every movie has to be tagged, per the ministry’s draft law, “synthetic.”

In this formulation that places “synthetic” and “real” on the two plates of a common balance, one is likely to see the “synthetic” side would go low. The laptop I am typing this piece on is definitely “synthetic”, and so is the software (MS Word). My mind that has taken input from many things that are synthetic is definitely not natural. No, I am not extending the argument in an ever expanding universe of things (IoT, Internet of Things). IoT was what people were attracted to some 20 years ago. Now, where has it gone? Nowhere, it is just not visible as it does not generate any vibes. Yes, I want to use some jargons, just keep myself abreast of some things!

As I have argued earlier, nothing that man makes can be tagged “Artificial”, and that includes intelligence. Can AI ever escape natural intelligence? I have my doubts. Human genes can be visualized as being spread out in a gene lake (not a piddly pool, but a large lake) and by chance some of them, say about 20,000, come together and a human is born. That is natural. It is the same with AI. Artificial Intelligence is as natural as Natural Intelligence.

You may argue with the above, but not with the following: how do I know that the neurons in your brain did not keep firing randomly and out came ChatGPT? Why would I allow you to make money using this most fortuitous event that merely fortuitously localized in your brain, which anyway, is another fortuitous level−indeed, hundreds of thousands of levels in fortuitous sequences−unless there is something exclusively “synthetic” in it, and you just happened to be the undeserved owner of this exclusivity? 

The worst thing I came to know from that news item is the reason the IT Minister is taking such a keen interest.

“…the deep fakes … are harming society …People are using some prominent persons image and creating deep fakes which are then affecting their personal lives, privacy as well as [creating] various misconceptions in society.” A single OUCH! Does not suffice. Deep fakes would not come to the attention of the minister had they been of common people, he seems to be claiming. The reason the government is interested, in the minister’s own words, “…affecting (prominent persons’) image…” and other personal aspects of these “prominent” persons’ lives. This is abominable.

Doesn’t the minister know that if relevant statistics is available, he would find his statements translate into celebrities’ lives are to be taken care of. What about the other citizens. He seems not to care except when time comes to beg for their votes.

It is stupidity. So, you ask, is the issue I have raised an abomination or merely unimaginably stupidity. If I feel generous, it is the latter.

Raghuram Ekambaram