Badly edited video that’s claimed to be showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Public acknowledgment of Russian demands drew widespread ridicule on Wednesday, but experts say it could be a harbinger of more sophisticated deception to come.
The video shows Zelensky speaking from the president’s lecture and urging his countrymen to lay down their arms to face the Russian invaders. It is not clear whether anyone was convinced.
Internet users immediately noted discrepancies between the skin tone on Zelensky’s neck and face, the strange accent in the video, and the pixelation around his head. A Facebook official later said the company was removing the footage from its platform.
1/ Earlier today, our teams identified and removed a deepfake video claiming that President Zelensky was issuing a statement he never did. It reportedly appeared on a compromised website and then started appearing across the internet.
— Nathaniel Gleicher (@ngleicher) 16 March 2022
Nina Schick, author of deepfakesSaid the video sounded like “an absolutely terrifying face swap”, referring to programs that can digitally graft one person’s face onto another’s body – a broad family of computer technologies. part of what can Surrealist counterfeiting known as “deepfakes”.
Television station Ukraine24 said in a facebook post That video was broadcast by “enemy hackers” and “Fake! Fake!”
The station could not be immediately reached for more detail and Ukraine’s cyber surveillance agency did not immediately return messages seeking comment. But Ukraine’s Defense Ministry later released a video from the real Zelensky explicitly dismissing the footage as “childish provocation”.
“We are at home and defending Ukraine. We are not going to lay down any weapons. For our victory “, – President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa pic.twitter.com/IkfDxLzqne
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) 16 March 2022
“We are not going to lay down any weapons until our victory,” he said.
Ukrainian officials have warned of the danger of deepfakes, especially as Moscow’s forces were denied a quick victory on the battlefield after the February 24 invasion. Two weeks ago, Ukraine’s military intelligence put out a short video alerting the country to the threat of deepfakes, alleging that the Kremlin was incorporating a stunt.
You all have probably heard about deepfake technology, which is a combination of deep learning and mock words, a technique to synthesize human images based on artificial intelligence.
Preparing for provocation of the Russian Federation.https://t.co/XYyS9WsPkK— Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (@DI_Ukraine) 2 March 2022
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Schick called the fake Zelensky video “too crude,” but warned that it was a matter of time before the technology became more accessible. “Hopefully, this kind of fake will be easier to produce while also looking highly authentic,” she said.
