Substantial portions of White Paper on Kerala’s fiscal health AI-generated: Thomas Isaac

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Senior Communist Party of India [CPI(M)] leader and former State Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac has alleged that substantial portions of the White Paper on Kerala’s fiscal health laid in the Assembly on Thursday appear to be artificial intelligence- (AI) generated.

At a press conference here on Friday, Mr. Isaac said an independent verification and universally-accepted AI detection tools show that a “substantial portion” of the 195-page document is AI-generated. “AI platforms were used to analyse data including those from the Secret Section of the Finance department. We had wondered how this 195-page document was created within the span of less than a week,” Mr. Isaac said.

Mr. Isaac wanted Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan to clarify whether the document was indeed AI-generated and, if so, to what extent, and whether sensitive data from the Secret Section of the Finance department was released externally and analysed using such tools.

Mr. Isaac’s charge comes on the heels of former Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal on Thursday questioning the propriety of tabling a White Paper in the House drafted by external parties. Past White Papers laid in the Assembly were prepared by the Finance department, Mr. Balagopal had said. The document was drafted by a special committee chaired by former Union Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar for drafting the White Paper. The committee included economist and former Director of the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation D. Narayana, and Professor and Director of the Centre for Development Studies C. Veeramani.

“I’m not against using AI. We cannot take such a stand in modern times. But the problem is that data with the Secret Section was released into the public domain platforms to generate it. The Chief Minister should clarify,” Mr. Isaac said.

There are numerous guidelines issued by the Supreme Court, Union Finance Ministry, the High Court and the Kerala government regarding the application of AI tools including Large Language Models (LLM)