Deepfake Shared as Real Video of Notable Indians Promoting Musk’s Quantum AI
The video is a deepfake and does not show Indians endorsing an investment platform called Quantum AI.
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A video purportedly showing journalist Rajdeep Sardesai talking about Elon Musk's "investment platform he originally developed for billionaires," with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, Wipro chairperson Azim Premji supporting it is being shared on social media.
What happens in the video?: In the video, Sardesai claims that Musk was "furious" after Indian hackers leaked the platform, while Musk talks about how "Quantum AI can more than triple the investment amount within a single day."
Meanwhile, Sitharaman talks about the platform accelerating growth while Murthy talks about it enabling people to earn anywhere between ₹30,000 and ₹50,000 per day by investing ₹21,000.
The Quint also received a query to verify the validity of this clip on our WhatsApp tipline.
Is is true?: No, it is a deepfake.
At the time of writing this report, the sign-up link shared with the post led to a website selling furniture.
How do we know?: We watched the video closely and noticed that in many places, the voice of the people was monotonous and their lip movements did not match the words they were supposedly saying.
Next, we ran keyword searches using each of the Indians' names, supplemented with 'Quantum AI investment' — such as Rajdeep Sardesai Quantum AI' — to look for any statements about the platform in question.
However, none of these searches led us to any credible results about Sardesai, Sitharaman, Murthy, or Premji endorsing the platform.
Is it AI?: To confirm whether the video was created or altered using Artificial Intelligence (AI), we ran sections of it through Hive Moderation's AI-generated content (AIGC) detector.
For parts with Rajdeep Sardesai and Elon Musk, their tool showed a 99 percent change of the audio being AI generated.
It gave the video and aggregate score of 99.8 percent for being AI-generated or a deepfake.
(Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)
The section featuring Nirmala Sitharaman and Narayana Murthy received a 98.8 percent likelihood of containing AI-generated or deepfake content.
This part, too, was found to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.
(Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)
DAU's analysis: Team WebQoof shared this video with the Misinformation Combat Alliance's (MCA) Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU), which ran it through several AIGC detectors.
They found that Hiya's Audio Intelligence tool gave a 33 percent probability that the audio was created using AI.
Hiya's tool indicated a low probability of the audio being AI.
(Source: Hiya/DAU)
Additionally, when the DAU ran the same clip through Hive Moderation's paid AIGC detector, it found markers of AI manipulation on Elon Musk's and Azim Premji's faces.
It also showed that a major chunk of the audio in the clip was created using AI.
Musk's face was flagged as a deepfake.
(Source: Hive Moderation/DAU)
This person's face, too, was highlighted as a deepfake.
(Source: Hive Moderation/DAU)
The link shared along with the video, prompting people to sign up to the platform led us to the website of a furniture website at the time of writing this report.
The link with the claim leads to a random website.
(Source: Aurorasleeps/Screenshot)
What harms do these videos pose?: On 6 August, a 59-year-old man from Pune lost about 43 lakh rupees after he fell for a similar video featuring Narayana and Sudha Murty talking about an investment platform, Indian Express reported.
This incident was yet another scam in a string of such instances, which caused real-world harm to unsuspecting people.
To see how these scams manifest and how you and your loved ones can protect yourselves against them, read our report on these deepfake scams from our special series, Scamguard.
Our special series, Scamguard, explores all the latest scams online.
(Source: The Quint)
Conclusion: A deepfake video has gone viral with the false claim that Rajdeep Sardesai, Azim Premji, Nirmala Sitharaman, and Narayana Murthy vouched for Elon Musk's 'Quantum AI' investment platform.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)