The viral 80s AI trend has taken an unexpected political turn, with the BJP and Congress using AI-generated images to trade indirect jabs on social media.
What began as a popular trend of transforming contemporary photographs into retro-style images has now become another avenue for political messaging, with posts shared by units of both parties attracting attention online.
Congress post features Maruti Omni
The Congress unit in Kerala shared an AI-generated image showing a bald man sitting in the front passenger seat of a Maruti Omni van.
The image was captioned, “A Gujarat street in the 80s.”
A poster visible on a wall beside the road carried the Hindi message, “Please smile, you are in Delhi.” The combination of the Gujarat reference and the visual prompted social media users to interpret the post as an indirect political message aimed at the BJP.
The choice of the Maruti Omni also added another layer to the post. Introduced in India in 1984, the van became a familiar sight in popular culture and was frequently portrayed in films as a vehicle associated with villains and criminals. It later acquired the informal internet nickname of a “kidnapping van”.
BJP responds with Italy-themed AI image
The BJP’s Telangana unit responded by sharing another AI-generated image.
It showed a woman in a red dress dancing on a table inside what appeared to be a bar, with several people watching and liquor bottles visible in the background.
The BJP reposted the Congress post and captioned its own AI-generated image, “Lusiana, Italy. Circa-1970s.”
While the post did not directly name any individual, the reference appeared to allude to Lusiana, the Italian town associated with Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s birthplace.
The BJP’s Kerala unit also shared an AI-generated image aimed indirectly at the Congress, showing people appearing to cheer in a bar while watching a performer.
80s AI trend becomes political
The exchange highlights how viral AI trends are increasingly being incorporated into political communication and online campaigning.
Instead of simply recreating the visual style of the 1980s, the images shared by the two parties carried political references that invited users to interpret the posts as attacks on their rivals.
The social media exchange has also sparked criticism, with the use of AI-generated imagery for political trolling raising questions about the tone and nature of online political discourse.
What started as a light-hearted AI trend has thus evolved into another battleground for BJP-Congress rivalry on social media, demonstrating how quickly popular internet formats can be adapted for political messaging.
