The video posted by a state branch of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) showed Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma shooting an image of two men in Muslim skull caps. “Foreigner-free Assam”, read one caption across the video. “Why did you not go to Pakistan?” said another.

One of the men in the photo that Sarma was portrayed as shooting was Gaurav Gogoi, a leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), the BJP’s main competitor in Assam for the state’s upcoming legislative elections next month.

Gogoi has stated that he is Hindu but enjoys visiting different religious sites and observing their norms. He has been photographed wearing traditional Muslim attire during religious occasions such as Eid.

But the image of him in the video shared by BJP Assam, wearing a casual singlet with a skull cap, was not one of those occasions.

Bellingcat has seen several dozen videos posted by the BJP that use generative artificial intelligence (AI) alongside anti-Muslim and anti-Bangladeshi messaging in the border states of Assam and West Bengal in December last year, ahead of legislative elections scheduled in both states for April.

Bellingcat analysed 499 social media posts containing photos and videos shared on Facebook, Instagram and X by the BJP’s official accounts in the two states for this time period, finding 194 posts that appeared to meet the United Nations’ definition of hate speech: discriminating against persons or communities based on inherent characteristics such as religion and national origin. Of these, 31 (about one in six of the hateful posts) contained the obvious use of AI-generated imagery.

Chart: Galen Reich

These appear to be part of a larger pattern of politicians and parties globally using generative AI to amplify hateful or divisive content, particularly ahead of major political events such as elections.

Ahead of the New York City mayoral race last year, Andrew Cuomo’s official X account shared, then deleted, an AI-generated video depicting Mamdani eating rice with his hands and a Black man in a keffiyeh shoplifting. In Italy, several opposition parties complained to a communications watchdog after deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s League party published a series of AI-generated images depicting men of colour attacking women or police officers. And in the UK, videos by an AI-generated rapper funded by the far-right Advance UK party, with lyrics targeting Muslims, were viewed millions of times.

A Campaign of Hate

Both Assam and West Bengal share a border with Bangladesh. BJP, the world’s largest political party, is currently in power in Assam, where legislative elections are scheduled on Apr. 9. West Bengal, which goes to the polls on Apr. 23, is governed by the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Tensions between India and Bangladesh worsened after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who enjoys close ties with Delhi, was ousted in 2024 and fled to India.

US-based international affairs expert Mohammed Zeeshan told Bellingcat that the “dehumanising and debasing” terminology used in India to refer to alleged illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, including by senior ministers, has caused resentment towards India in Bangladesh.

“The situation, in fact, was so bad that Hasina herself had subtly warned the Modi government in public statements that Indian domestic rhetoric was endangering Bangladeshi Hindus, who bore the brunt of that resentment,” Zeeshan said.

Zobaida Nasreen, a professor of anthropology at Dhaka University, said that anti-Muslim rhetoric intensified by BJP leaders reinforces the belief in Bangladesh that Muslims and Bengalis are being collectively targeted in India.

“Viral videos containing this message tend to spread quickly across Bangladeshi media and social platforms especially on Facebook, enhancing perceptions of hostility and triggering anti-India sentiment or nationalist backlash,” she added.

In December, the month our dataset was collected, Dipu Das, a Hindu garment worker, was beaten to death at an anti-India protest in Bangladesh over allegations that he had made derogatory remarks about Islam.

And while the administration led by Bangladesh’s newly elected leader Tarique Rahman has sought to reset strained ties, most of the hateful social media posts we saw posted by the BJP in December attacked Bangladeshi Muslims and/or Bengali-origin Muslims in India, showing how tensions between the two countries continue to influence political messaging in India’s border states.

Bellingcat’s analysis included a total of 202 posts by BJP Assam and 297 by BJP’s West Bengal branch on their official accounts. We also looked at posts shared by BJP’s main opponent parties – 194 from INC in Assam and 357 from the TMC in West Bengal – during the same time period in December.

This included all visual social media posts (containing photos or videos) by each party in December, except those that did not appear to contain any overt political messaging, such as those simply commemorating public holidays. We only counted each photo or video once, regardless of how many platforms it was shared across.

Although all of the major parties contesting in the Assam and West Bengal state elections appeared to use AI-generated imagery in some of their posts, there appeared to be a particularly high concentration of hateful messaging in the ones posted by the BJP’s accounts.

In Assam, we identified 28 posts by BJP using apparently AI-generated imagery, of which 24 carried hateful messaging. Of the 194 INC posts we looked at from December, 41 appeared to feature AI-generated imagery, but none of these appeared to carry hateful messaging.

In West Bengal, we found 14 BJP posts that contained clear indicators of AI-generated imagery, seven of which were hateful. We also identified 15 posts by the incumbent TMC that appeared to feature AI imagery, but none of these appeared to meet the definition of hate speech.

When contacted for comment, BJP Assam spokesperson Rupam Goswami did not directly respond to questions on the party’s general use of AI but said they did not post any AI-generated photos of Gogoi. “BJP does not stoop so low,” he told Bellingcat.

As for the “point blank” shooting video, Goswami initially said the person responsible had been punished and removed from the party. However, when asked about Sarma saying that he would re-post the video with those he was depicted shooting labelled as “Bangladeshis”, Goswami said, “[Bangladeshis] need to be completely suppressed.”

BJP West Bengal did not respond to multiple requests for comment by Bellingcat via phone and email.

It is important to note that as generative AI technology improves, it can be increasingly difficult to detect AI-generated imagery. Our manual count of AI-generated imagery only included posts that had obvious signs of generative AI such as unnaturally smooth textures and multiple people with the same faces. It is therefore possible that there were other images in our dataset where generative AI was used more subtly.

However, Joyojeet Pal, Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, told Bellingcat that the quality of these visuals, or whether they looked real, was not the priority.

“What politicians in India have understood is that the sociocultural drivers of misinformation are most important for elections, so they harp on about things to the extent that they have started to not care about form over substance. It looks bad? It doesn’t matter,” he said.

More important to voters, according to Pal, was whether they already believed in the narrative contained in the videos, which generative AI could help create more quickly: “AI is helping cement polarised opinions by giving you the kind of content you have already decided you want to engage with.”

When asked about INC’s use of AI, party spokesperson Aman Wadud said that it was obvious that some of the videos they posted were made with AI and that there was no intention to mislead.