Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
Claim
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is endorsing a stock market forum.
Fact
Video found to be a deepfake with an AI-generated voice clone, which leads users to malicious websites.
Several Facebook pages are circulating a purported advertisement of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani seemingly promoting a stock market forum.
The Reliance Industries Limited chairman is heard saying, “Hello everyone, my name is Mukesh Ambani. I find that many people don’t know how to pick stocks and just follow the trend. But investment is not gambling and it is not advisable to not have a mature investment strategy. So, we created a completely free stock forum community to introduce the most popular stocks and recommended stocks in the latest stock market. Teach you how to make money by trading in stocks, provide financial security strategies, stock investment skills, stock selection methods and share valuable investment advice. And for market analysis, we have a professional analysis team to assist you as well as investors who have already made money to share their experiences. Do you really understand the stock market? Come join us now.”
Fact Check
Newschecker first noticed that the lip movements of Ambani in the viral video did not sync with the speech, an indicator of the clip being a possible deepfake. Also, a keyword search for “Mukesh Ambani stock market forum”, did not throw up any credible news reports of such a venture, further raising our doubts.
We then ran a reverse image search of keyframes of the video, which led us to this Youtube video, dated January 10, 2024, uploaded by DD News, stating that Ambani addressed the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit.
“Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman and MD of Reliance Industries, stated that Reliance has always been and will continue to be a Gujarati company. He added that over the past 10 years, Reliance has invested more than ₹12 Lakh Crores, equivalent to over 150 billion dollars, in creating world-class assets and capacities throughout India, with over one-third of this investment being made in Gujarat alone,” read the description of the video. Similar reports can be seen here, here and here, where, apart from there being no mention of a stock market forum venture, you can see that the voice clearly does not match the one heard in the viral clip, which suggests that it was AI generated.
We ran the video past Deepware, a community-driven open-source Deepfake detection tool, which said it was “suspicious”.
We then ran the audio past ElevenLabs, a voice AI research and deployment company, which said it was “very likely” that the voice was generated with ElevenLabs.
We also ran the link, attached to the Facebook post, past Scam Detector, a major online fraud prevention resource, which states that the website is “Young. Unsafe. Warning”, with a phishing score of 92/100. “The biggest problem is the fact that the domain name is too new. It was registered just a few days ago. This makes it almost impossible for a super new website to open the business, promote its services, convince clients to acquire them, use them, and then take the time to submit the reviews online. All of this is just a few days. Hence, the above-mentioned ‘Young. Unsafe. Warning’,” read the report, which confirmed that the viral advertisement was dubious.
Also Read: Viral Video Shows Critically Ill, Not ‘Drunk’ Leopard As Claimed
Conclusion
A viral advertisement of Mukesh Ambani promoting a stock market community forum was found to be a deepfake that leads users to a malicious website.
Result: Altered Media
Sources
Youtube video, DD News, January 10, 2024
Deepware, online deepfake detection tool
ElevenLabs’s AI voice detection tool
Scam Detector
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Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
