“The new frontier is hyper-personalised micro-targeting using voter roll data, welfare beneficiary lists, and social media behaviour to deliver tailored messages in real time,” said Singh of Counterpoint Research.
Experts said micro-targeting now works by using AI to sift voter and booth-level data, identify persuadable voters, and send them tailored messages based on local issues, demographics, welfare status or political leanings.
AI cannot know with certainty who is persuadable, but it can predict which voters may be more open to influence by analysing booth-level voting patterns from past elections, surveys and canvassing data, and even signals from social media or local grievances, said experts.
Bagri said that “micro targeting (voters) is better with AI”.
His firm is working on election campaigns in multiple states, including at the party level in Uttar Pradesh, and with individual candidate clients in Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. He did not disclose the names of the parties or clients.
Polling in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry was held on Apr 9. Tamil Nadu votes on Apr 23, while West Bengal votes in two phases on Apr 23 and Apr 29. Results for all five regions will be declared on May 4.
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, is expected to hold its election between February and March 2027.
That said, AI is not only being used by political parties and candidates.
The Election Commission of India (ECI), the constitutional body responsible for conducting and supervising the country’s elections, for the first time deployed AI-powered surveillance monitoring systems at polling booths in Kerala on Apr 9, according to local reports.
The system was used to track crowd levels and manage long queues.
The ECI also deployed AI-generated videos as part of voter awareness campaigns for the first time during these elections in April, local media reported.
But the ECI has also come under fire for using AI in a voter-roll clean-up exercise that, according to local reports, deleted nearly 52 million names across 12 states and one Union Territory ahead of the polls, including about 9.1 million in West Bengal.
Many voters claimed they were wrongly removed over minor spelling errors and data mismatches, the reports added.
On Feb 9, the Supreme Court questioned the use of AI to flag “logical discrepancies”, saying it did not reflect ground realities in India.
On Apr 17, the court declined to order a blanket restoration of names, but told the ECI to publish supplementary voter lists for those cleared by 19 appellate tribunals before polling in West Bengal.
Experts said that beyond headline-grabbing gimmicks, AI is now becoming part of the everyday workflow of campaigning.
In Tamil Nadu, local political parties now see AI as essential to their operations, not optional, Krishnan told CNA.
She said all political parties in the state had hired AI engineers and other digital staff for campaign work, describing them as “highly professional, highly paid people”.
Experts said these engineers are paid between 80,000 rupees (US$860) and 90,000 rupees a month. The average monthly salary in Tamil Nadu is 19,600 rupees in 2026, according to a Forbes report.
HOW DIFFERENT STATES USE AI DIFFERENTLY
Among the states, Tamil Nadu stands out for AI use, appearing to be the most organised, visible and normalised, experts said.
The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party and debutant Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) – led by actor-turned-politician C Joseph Vijay, better known as Vijay – have been churning out AI-generated short videos and memes on a near-daily basis, according to a report by local media outlet The Federal.
It described them as having one of the “most intense online rivalries” in the campaign for Tamil Nadu.
One of the campaign’s most controversial moments came when an AI-generated video of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK founder C N Annadurai went viral.
It recreated his voice and portrayed him as endorsing TVK’s Vijay as the state’s future Chief Minister while criticising the current DMK leadership, The Federal reported.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/india-state-elections-ai-use-campaigning-6063751
