A 2-minute 22-second video, purportedly showing S Jaishankar, external affairs minister of India, endorsing an online investment platform, has gone viral across social media platforms. According to the video, every citizen who invests ₹21,000 in the project would receive ₹60,000 on the first day, accumulating ₹15,00,000 in the first month.
The archived version of the post can be seen here. We received this video on our Whatsapp tipline (9999499044), with users requesting us to fact-check it.
Fact Check
Newschecker ran a keyword search for “S Jaishankar 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 synchronisation with the speech, raising our doubts on whether the video was AI-edited.
A reverse image search of keyframes led us to this 01:03:41-hour Youtube video, uploaded by the Asia Society on September 25, 2024, where the Asia Society Policy Institute hosted Jaishankar for an address and discussion with Daniel Russel, vice president of Asia Society Policy Institute, in New York. At no point in the speech did Jaishankar 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.
We then ran the link to the trading platform, attached to the post and allegedly endorsed by Jaishankar, past Scam Detector, a major online fraud prevention resource. The detector stated that the website is “Untrustworthy. Risky. Danger,” giving it a low trust score. “The algorithm detected high-risk activity related to phishing, spamming, and other factors noted in the Untrustworthy. Risky. Danger. tags above. Long story short, we recommend staying away from this website,” read the review, further confirming that the viral post was intended to mislead people into investing in dubious investment schemes.
Also Read: AI-Generated Photos Of Kareena Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha in Hijab Shared As Real
Conclusion
A viral video of S Jaishankar endorsing an investment platform was found to be a deepfake, while the link to the platform was deemed suspicious.
Sources
Youtube video, Asia Society, September 25, 2024
Hive Moderation tool
ElevenLabs AI voice detection tool
Scam Detector review