Pakistan’s Lahore Jibran Ilyas experienced a moment of clarity.
Ilyas, like a large portion of his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had been overcome with uncertainty. Imran Khan, the flamboyant former prime minister, has been incarcerated for several months. High ranking party officials are missing. It looked difficult, if not impossible, to run a significant campaign for the National Assembly and provincial legislatures on February 8.
The PTI social media lead in Chicago then had an idea. Through the party’s attorneys, Ilyas and his colleagues delivered a message to Khan while he was incarcerated in December.
“We observed the persecution of our political party. We observed the people’s level of depression. We witnessed the authorities call off a few of our gatherings. We began to consider the possibility of staging a “virtual rally” in order to circumvent the prohibition, Ilyas told Al Jazeera.
“He didn’t know what a virtual rally was, so he assumed we would do something on Zoom,” said Khan. However, we clarified our plans, saying that we would display testimonies from PTI chapters around the world and that He gave the go-ahead when we presented our plan, the social media lead continued.
Using a website called StreamYard, the PTI organized what was likely Pakistan’s first “virtual rally” on December 17, drawing in over five million viewers across a variety of platforms.
That was not where Ilyas and his group ended. There was still one more surprise planned.
“People attend PTI rallies to hear our leader speak, regardless of the other speakers. He had been in jail for three months, during which time no one had heard from him. Rather, we created his audio clip using AI [artificial intelligence] and played it at the imaginary rally, Ilyas explained.
The four-minute speech was produced by AI and was based on handwritten notes that Khan had supplied to Ilyas and his team while he was incarcerated. It included video montages and snippets from his previous talks.
Ilyas reports that the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
