In India, scams are becoming more sophisticated thanks to artificial intelligence. The Bombay Stock Exchange announced at the end of April that it was going to file a complaint, after the broadcast, on social networks, of a falsified video of its boss, Sundararaman Ramamurthy, whose avatar, virtual and rigged, gives investment advice.
Disinformation, already widely used in politics, is booming in finance, while the number of investors in the country is experiencing a spectacular increase. It is spreading thanks to deepfake technology, a hyperfaking which takes the form of a video and can be bought in India for only 8 rupees (9 euro cents) per unit.
Deepfakes play the role of touts, through the trust they generate, towards influencers who sell their advice to novice stock marketers on social networks. However, famous Indian bosses make excellent touts.
The avatar of Ratan Tata, the former boss of Tata, appears, for example, in a video where he recommends Internet users to follow the “terrific Laila Rao”, a finance expert like no other. In fact, said Mme Rao gives his advice in a dressing gown, with the word ” finance “ which flashes at the bottom of the image, surrounded by icons of racing hearts.
Experts like her are nicknamed the “finfluencers”. Not always credible, they showcase their fortune on YouTube as proof of their success and comment on complex graphics as proof of their expertise. The Indian stock market policeman regularly closes the accounts of these scammers who pay very high prices for their bogus advice, and some of whom are followed by hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
A capitalization that has doubled in three years
If advice is so sought after in India, it is because investments in the stock market are a new phenomenon there. This began during confinement, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and benefits from the good health of the local economy, as well as digitalization, which facilitates buying and selling operations.
At the end of 2023, the Bombay Stock Exchange overtook that of Hong Kong to rank seventh in the world, with a capitalization of 4,000 billion dollars (3,712 billion euros), which has doubled in three years. The benchmark index, the Sensex, rose 20% in one year. It’s not just artificial intelligence that is driving prices up. In 2023, the introductions of Mankind Pharma, which manufactures pregnancy tests and condoms, or Cello World, which produces kitchen utensils, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
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