How BJP, Congress turned 80s AI trend turned into an all-out meme war

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s original picture from the 80s. Rahul Gandhi’s (R) AI-generated image.

NEW DELHI: What began as another harmless social media trend, turning present-day photographs into portraits straight out of the 1980s, has now found its way into the social feeds of politicians has triggered BJP-Congress war of memes.Over the past few days, Instagram and X have been flooded with AI-generated photographs featuring big hair, aviator sunglasses, denim jackets, vintage suits and the grainy finish of old family albums.BJP leaders were among the first to jump onto the trend. Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal shared an AI-generated photograph of himself dressed in a grey suit and aviators, writing simply: “Vibing to the 80s trend.”Union minister Kiren Rijiju followed with his own retro look, posing beside a car in an image designed to resemble a photograph from the decade.“Why is everyone going back to the 80s vibes? I’m also forced to 80s nostalgia!” he wrote.Congress Sevadal brought Rahul Gandhi into the picture, posting AI-generated photographs of the leader of opposition with the caption: “Rahul Gandhi catches the 80s trend wave.”The BJP’s official X handle also shared some original pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi believed to be from the 1980s era.What started as politicians recreating their younger selves soon became another format for the BJP and Congress to take veiled potshots at each other with AI doing the set design.The Congress’s Kerala unit shared an AI-generated image showing a bald man sitting in the front passenger seat of a Maruti Suzuki Omni, with the caption: “A Gujarat street in the 80s.”For context, the van, launched in India in the 1980s, became a familiar sight in Bollywood films where it was often shown being used by goons and kidnappers, eventually earning its own “kidnapping van” meme identity.BJP Gujarat hit back with an AI-generated image of its own.BJP’s Telangana unit also responded to the Congress post. It shared an image showing a woman in a red dress dancing on a table inside what appeared to be a bar, with liquor bottles visible in cabinets behind her.The description read: “Lusiana, Italy. Circa-1970s.”The BJP did not name anyone in the post either, but the reference was widely seen as an allusion to Lusiana, the Italian town where former Congress president Sonia Gandhi was born.Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, however, found a way of joining the trend without asking AI to take him back in time.“The 1980s seem to be back, courtesy of AI. I thought I’d join the trend the old-fashioned way,” he wrote, sharing photographs that were actually taken during the decade.

The pictures included Tharoor with his sons Ishaan and Kanishk.

What is the trend?

The trend itself is simple. Users upload a present-day selfie to AI tools such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini and ask them to recreate the image as if it had been taken in the 1980s.Unlike a regular vintage filter, the AI rebuilds the photograph around the person’s face, adding everything from big hairstyles and retro clothes to film grain and old-school studio lighting.The result is a polished throwback image that looks straight out of an old photo album or Bollywood publicity still. The trend has spread rapidly across Instagram and X, with influencers, celebrities and now politicians joining in.