India Today

Seeing is believing. That old truism is no longer true. Just days ago, a video of Bollywood actress Kajol changing into an outfit did the usual heated rounds of social media before it was flagged as a ‘deepfake’. Her face had been grafted onto the vi

Get set to rewire your mental map once again. The BJP-controlled Aligarh Municipal Corporation has passed a resolution to rename the town as ‘Harigarh’. The file will now be sent to the state government for consideration. The district councils of Ali

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has deemed it fit to tighten the screws on a certain sense of festival abandon that had gripped retail loans. Recognising the dangers that an unbridled rise in unsecured loans can cause to the banking system, the centr

On October 17, while inaugurating a Durga Puja in Kolkata, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee decided that a slum should no more be called a basti—the Bangla word used for a slum, which has gathered all the usual socio-economic connotations r

Team India’s loss in the ICC World Cup final on November 19 soon became a political debate on, of all things, panautis (bad omens). The match was held at the stadium in Ahmedabad named after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the chief guest. On N

It was the day of the World Cup final, and former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani was posting pictures of his meeting with Shubman Gill’s parents at his Gandhinagar home on social media. Why Rupani and not any other neta, everyone wondered. The g

It might be all the rage in the Indian cricket team, but in politics a beard still carries the old sense of renunciation or penance. That’s exactly the spirit in which Uttam Kumar Reddy, who was made Telangana Congress chief in the run-up to the 2018

Indian gods can be moody. And their worshippers must cope with the fluctuating benevolence. But Gunda Ravinder has had enough of it, and is contemplating apostasy. His deity? None other than Bharat Rashtra Samithi supremo K. Chandrashekar Rao. A stau

Is Shivraj Singh Chouhan already contemplating a quiet, retired life looking at the grass grow on a colonial bungalow’s lawn? Well, a naughty Congress would have you believe so, implying that Madhya Pradesh’s longest-serving CM has read what they hap

Don’t know Rajasthan Congress beyond Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot? Well, here are two worthies worth your attention, if only for the frequency with which you can hear them being dissed in Narendra Modi-Amit Shah speeches. Urban development minister

Vasundhara Raje may be off the roster as the BJP’s main face but she’s the only local eminence there for other candidates, even if only those on her side are being graced with a rally (she’s doing 60) in her whirlwind state tour. All other names bein

Deepfakes, as the name suggests, are deceptive images or audiovisuals created using AI and ‘deep learning’, where an algorithm is trained on original material and it then learns to produce something that closely resembles that original content. A pic

Sources: US Homeland Security, MIT DetectFakes project, interviews ■

Before you hit the forward button on your smartphone app next time, pause for a minute. That irresistibly funny image or suggestive video you are sharing may look convincingly real but could easily be a deepfake. Like the one of actress Rashmika Mand

1 At the heart of a deepfake is an autoencoder. An encoder takes an image and reduces it to a small number of variables. The decoder then takes this compact representation and expands it into the original image. Next, the training algorithm feeds ano

On Nov. 10, the Supreme Court said Punjab governor Banwarilal Purohit was “playing with fire” by sitting on bills passed by the legislature. Tamil Nadu governor R.N. Ravi also got flak for holding up 12 bills and creating a “constitutional deadlock”.

Q In a recent interaction with journalists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned of the threat of deepfakes. What is the extent of this threat and why should we be worried? We in the government have been aware for a while of the underlying rise of a d

Nitish Kumar ko gussa kyon aata hai? The Bihar chief minister and patriarch of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) has been venting his frustration quite openly of late. If, on November 3, he appeared to censure the Congress for being too preoccupied with t

Former governor of Gujarat and Jammu & Kashmir B.K. Nehru once described the constitutional position as one reserved for a “burnt-out superannuated member of the ruling party for whom a governorship was a kind of luxurious retirement”. A former gover

TOTAL POPULATION 130,725,310 NO. OF CASTES 215 Bihar will now have 65 per cent reservations from 50 per cent earlier for the underprivileged, besides the 10 per cent quota for the economically weak TOTAL NO. OF HOUSEHOLDS 27.67 MILLION EARNING < ₹6,0

Within minutes of the Maldivian state broadcaster declaring Mohamed Muizzu as the president-elect on October 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the “first leader” to congratulate him. In his message, PM Modi said that India remains committed to stre

+ MUTUAL FUNDS ENSURING A SEAMLESS TRANSFER INSURANCE THE DEDUCTIBLE OPTION ■

Old-time residents of Malleswaram will remind you of many historical events associated with the locality. It has pockets where generations have continued to reside and have long-standing bonds. Like many other homes here, the Shastri household has fo

Your parents need your financial support and so do your children. However, you also need to consider a plan for your own retirement and debt reduction. Finances are often stretched for the Sandwich Generation and it is necessary to prioritise them. T

Please tick your subscription choice and send the form to: We Care, Living Media India Limited, C-9, Sector 10, Noida-201301 (India) Living Media India Ltd. reserves the right to terminate or extend this offer or any part thereof at any time. For oth

Late in 2019, Tilak Raj quit his well-paying job to join his friends to start their own venture. At 46, this veteran techie had seen recession cycles, and had work stints in East Asia, Europe and the US. His financial life was stable with his spouse

If you are a mutual fund investor, you would have experienced the clamour over registrars, asset management companies (AMCs) and distributors nudging you to update the nomination space in your investment papers. To ensure easy transfer of investments

Every once in a while the investment market for mutual fund products witnesses the introduction of new fund offers, or NFOs. An NFO allows an asset management company (AMC) to raise funds from the public to operate a scheme based on the investment id

We all love to save money in our own ways, especially when it comes to choosing financial products and services. For instance, when it comes to insurance, some people buy a smaller cover than what they need to save money. Likewise, some people end up

The pre-match talk ahead of the 2023 Cricket World Cup finals circled around whether the men in blue, led by Rohit Sharma, were the strongest Indian ODI team ever. No one bothered with head-to-head comparisons between India and Australia; instead, th

Jasprit Bumrah’s return to international cricket happened just before the World Cup, so there were doubts about him being the same lethal force. However, the wily pacer showed that injuries have not caused him to lose a beat as he was at his imperiou

The fact that Mohammed Shami finished as the top wicket-taker in the World Cup despite sitting out the first four games is a testament to his blistering form. Shami was at his devastating best throughout—he took 24 wickets at an average of 10.70 and

An underrated aspect of India’s World Cup campaign was how good they were in the field. They rarely dropped catches and fielded like their lives depended on it. The introduction of the ‘best fielder’ medal, handed out in the dressing room after every

Devdutt Pattanaik has never been shy of expressing an opinion, even if it’s an unconventional one. This is perhaps his greatest strength as a mythologist, storyteller and public speaker. A doctor by training, he started writing while still working in

This is the story of Ganga Niwas and Sri Niwas, two neighbouring chawls in Parel, Mumbai. Valmiki Rao, a retired postman and resident of Ganga Niwas, writes down his memories of the year the Babri Masjid fell in Ayodhya, and the riots that engulfed M

When renowned costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, the first Indian to win an Academy Award, passed away on October 15, 2020 at the age of 91, her daughter, Radhika, decided it was time to open the doors to the warehouse in Colaba where Athaiya had preser

Following the success of Sutr Santati (‘continuity of yarn’)—a one-of-a-kind exhibition that celebrates India’s contemporary handmade textiles across geographies and cultures—at Delhi’s National Museum and the Melbourne Museum in Australia, the third

At the Asian Para Games in Hang-zhou in October, Sumit Antil was far from his best. A bulging disc in the back had been causing him trouble for a few months and he knew he had to preserve his body during the competition. “Since the leg with which I b

Q. Youtuber, actor and now a voice actor. How challenging was dubbing for the game show Takeshi’s Castle? On Instagram, I used to do dubbing, so I am familiar with it. The challenge was to write the entire show, record something and not find it funny