KATHMANDU, Dec 13: Gen Z leader Sudan Gurung has ridiculed CPN-UML leader Mahesh Basnet, accusing him of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to exaggerate the crowd size at the party’s 11th general convention.
Gurung made the remarks on social media after UML shared images from the opening session of the convention held on Saturday at Sallaghari, Bhaktapur.
According to Gurung, Basnet turned to technology after failing to deliver on his claim of mobilising 500,000 participants, allegedly manipulating images to make the crowd appear larger than it actually was.
In a Facebook post, Gurung wrote that when the promise of drawing half a million people fell short, “the method changed—drone images were fed into ChatGPT with instructions to make the crowd look like 500,000,” sarcastically adding that the belief Nepalis would applaud simply by seeing such images reflected misplaced confidence.
An artificial crowd created using the AI tool ‘Gemini'.
UML leader Basnet had earlier claimed that 500,000 party cadres would attend the convention. On Saturday, he posted images from the event on social media with the caption, “This is just a drop in the ocean of people present at the UML’s inaugural assembly.”
The original photo. Photo: Dipesh Darshandhari/Republica
However, one of the four images shared was found to have an artificially generated crowd added using Google’s AI tool, Gemini. Following the circulation of the AI-altered image as genuine, social media users criticised Basnet, with the episode quickly becoming a subject of online ridicule and trolling.