Video of Australian PM Albanese Suspending Visas for Pakistanis Is a Deepfake
The video has been altered using AI. Australia has not suspended visa services for Pakistani nationals.
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A video of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese purportedly talking about "suspending all visa services for Pakistani effective immediately (sic)" is being shared on social media.
The claim: The clip is being shared to claim that the decision was taken after the Bondi Beach attack on 14 December, after "Pakistani-origin terrorist" Naveed Akram was arrested for the terror attack.
(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)
Is it true?: No, the video was altered using artificial intelligence (AI) and does not show an authentic statement by Albanese.
There are no credible reports to support the claim that Australia has suspended visa services for Pakistan, or any country, in the wake of the terror attack.
How do we know?: We carried out a keyword search with the term 'Pakistan visa suspended Australia' but did not find any relevant results.
We then ran a reverse image search on the video, which led us to news reports from The Sydney Morning Herald and Brisbane Times, both of which were published in August 2022 and shows Albanese in the same clothing.
The report was published in 2022.
(Source: The Sydney Morning Herald/Altered by The Quint)
They mentioned that the photo showed Albanese during a press conference in Canberra in 2022.
Additionally, in the video, Albanese incorrectly calls the surviving gunman Naveed Akram, a Pakistani national.
However, media reports, including these ones by CNN and The Sydney Morning Herald, state that Naveed was born in Australia and is an Australian citizen and his father, Sajid, was an Indian national.
Neither of the gunmen hail from Pakistan.
(Source: The Sydney Morning Herald/Screenshot)
Is it AI?: To check whether the video was altered using AI, we ran it through AI-generated content detection tools.
Hive Moderation's tool said that the audio track was 84.3 percent likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.
The audio track got a score of 84 percent.
(Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)
Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detection tool gave the audio element an authenticity score of one out of 100, indicating that the voice was a deepfake.
The audio track is "likely a deepfake."
(Source: Hiya/Screenshot)
Conclusion: An AI-manipulated of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being shared to falsely claim that the nation has suspended visa services for Pakistani nationals.
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