1: A man, carrying a bottle of country liquor, suddenly stops in the dark of night. Right in front of him stands a Royal Bengal Tiger. The man feels the tiger too could be his drinking companion. So he holds out the bottle toward the tiger. The tiger, like an obedient child, lowers its head and takes a sip! Scene
2: On a summer afternoon, a boy is sitting on a cot on his rooftop. Suddenly, a tiger jumps over the wall and lands on him. But what happens next? The boy’s pet stray dog rushes in to save him. It charges towards the tiger. The tiger roars, but – frightened of the little mongrel – runs away!
Scene 3: During the Jagaddhatri Puja in Chandannagar, as the crowd thickens, a lion sneaks into the town. Not only does it enter, it even stops in front of a sweet shop to eat sandesh! These are just three examples – there are many more like them.
They are the tricks of technology: deep fake videos of humans and wild animals. Using AI prompts, people have created such deep fakes where one sees, for instance, a tiger leaping straight from the forests of the Sundarbans into a fisherman’s boat mid-river; or a leopard carrying her cub in her mouth and handing it over to a woman driver standing beside her car. The last of these videos has over 72 million views. As the number of views increases, so does the money flowing into the creators’ pockets. Those who watch them never question the authenticity of these videos; they are, rather, entertained by them.
But do they ever stop for a second to think about the terrible damage these videos cause – to human society, to wildlife, to the planet itself? Not long ago, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, a man created a deepfake video showing a cheetah roaming outside his home in the Ashiana police station area. As soon as the video spread, panic gripped the locality. The police had to step in to control the situation. The Station House Officer of Ashiana, Chatrapal Singh, later said, “We detained the boy, made him write an undertaking that he would never do such a thing again, and released him.” But is it enough? If during those few hours of intense panic, a single weak-hearted person had been harmed, who would have taken responsibility for it?
Such harm could easily have occurred – but the real damage runs much deeper. According to wildlife expert and Sankala Foundation program lead Dibyendu Mondal, these deep fake videos are seriously undermining wildlife conservation efforts. “These videos look so realistic that people believe them. In that case, why would they accept that it’s necessary to maintain a safe distance from wild animals? When such videos go viral, how can one convince people that tigers don’t drink alcohol or jump onto rooftops to attack someone? Seeing tigers roam freely through city alleys again and again will only distort people’s understanding of their true nature.” He has further warned: “If a leopard actually appears on a street someday and someone, influenced by these videos, rushes forward to take a selfie, what then?”
Even now, some reckless visitors climb into zoo enclosures with wild animals. If these deep fakes encourage that tendency, one can easily imagine the consequences. These fears are far from baseless. One may ask – why are people making such deep fake videos about wild animals? The simple answer is the lure of viral fame and easy money from high view counts on social media. But is that all? The deeper reason lies in the anthropocentric worldview that humans uphold and celebrate. Humans refuse to accept that not all animals are the same – that there is a fundamental difference between domestic animals like cows, dogs, and chickens, and wild creatures like tigers, lions, or cranes.
Humans have always believed themselves to be the superior species. They often forget that they, too, are animals. In many ways, some animals are even stronger than humans. Yet from their ingrained sense of superiority arises the conviction that all animals are, in essence, their pets—beings that can be tamed, that understand human emotions, and that even behave like humans. This tendency to attribute human qualities to animals is what theorists call anthropomorphism. This term, popularised by Mary Midgley, means the projection of human qualities onto the non-human. But why does humankind assign human traits to animals? In short, to erase their animality.
The idea is to show that the animals that resemble humans are “good,” while all others are “bad.” Just as people feel affection toward pet cows or dogs, they develop the same false affection for the deep-faked tiger or lion. But this affection is illusory – and dangerous – for both humans and animals. Animals do deserve different treatment. In the West, the two most widely discussed books on this subject are Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983). Harriet Ritvo’s The Animal Estate and Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science should also be mentioned in this regard. With the publication of these works, animal studies began to occupy a significant place as a discourse.
Various theorists, in different ways, have tried to understand the human attitude toward animals. As mentioned already, they have shown that human behaviour towards animals has been shaped by an anthropocentric worldview. Peter Singer called this attitude speciesism – the mistaken belief that one species is inherently superior to others, a notion primarily expressed by humans. In the realm of philosophy too – particularly in the West – many thinkers have initiated philosophical discussions on animals, among whom Jacques Derrida is the most significant. In a long ten-hour lecture devoted to animality and titled “The Animal That Therefore I Am” (published later as a book), Derrida offered an important analysis that included references to Aristotle, Heidegger, and several other philosophers and their takes on animals.
He demonstrated how Western philosophy has, for centuries, been deeply rooted in the belief that humans are far superior to other animals. This sense of superiority is the real cause behind the creation of so many deep fake videos on animals and humans which, blurring the line between reality and hyper-reality, are endangering both wild species and human society. What, then, is the way forward? Veteran Indian wildlife expert Bittu Sehgal observes: “Not everyone knows that tigers and leopards climb trees differently, or that they differ in weight. But those who do know must take the initiative to warn others about deepfakes.” Such people can mass-report these videos and comment publicly to declare them fake. One more step is urgently needed.
Under India’s current Wildlife Protection Act, there are no provisions to curb AI-generated deep fake content. Lawmakers must now act. To protect wildlife, it is high time a law is passed specifically targeting deep fake videos involving animals. Just as cybercrime cases are regularly filed for other forms of online misconduct, the government must move quickly to enact strict legislation ensuring the protection of wildlife – and to bring animal-related deepfake videos squarely under the purview of cybercrime.
(The writer is Professor, Department of English and Culture Studies, and Director, Centre for Australian Studies, University of Burdwan.)