A 3-minute 33-second “CNN-News18” report, purportedly showing Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman endorsing a government-run investment platform, has gone viral across social media platforms. According to the video, every citizen who invests ₹21,000 in the project would receive ₹15,00,000 in the first month.

We received this video on our Whatsapp tipline (9999499044), too, with users requesting us to fact-check it.

Fact Check

Newschecker ran a keyword search for “Nirmala Sitharaman investment platform,” which did not throw up any credible news reports. Also, we noticed that the lip movements seemed completely unnatural and were not completely in sync with the speech, raising our doubts on whether the video was AI-manipulated.

We then ran a reverse image search of the keyframe featuring Sitharaman, which led us to this DD News live-stream of Sitharaman’s press conference after presenting the Union Budget on February 1, 2025. At no point in the 49:44 press conference did Sitharaman mention any investment or trading platform, indicating that the viral video was digitally altered.

Newschecker next ran the video past Hive Moderation, an AI-content detection tool, which found it “99.9% likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.” We then ran the audio past ElevenLabs, a voice AI research and deployment company, which said there was a 98% probability that the voice was generated with ElevenLabs. We ran the audio past Resemble AI’s Deepfake Detector, which stated that the voice was “Fake,” further confirming that the viral video was a deepfake.

Also Read: Oscars 2025: Robert De Niro Swears At Trump? No, Viral Video Is From 2018 Tony Awards

Conclusion

Viral video of Nirmala Sitharaman promoting an investment project found to be a deepfake.

Sources
DD News video, Youtube, February 1, 2025
Hive Moderation tool
ElevenLabs AI voice detection tool