A video of Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram Member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor praising Pakistan’s cricket board is being shared on social media.
Here’s what he said:
“I think how Pakistan played is indeed brilliant. I do not know what they would do on the field. But what they did diplomatically is absolute brilliance. The Indian cricket board was completely pinned hands down. This serves as a lesson that good diplomacy can even make a weak nation appear as a goliath. Pakistan has done it, and I want to appreciate them for it. It is unthinkable.”
Some context: Following an initial call to boycott the match against India in the current Mens T20 World Cup, Pakistan’s government instructed the cricket team to play as planned on 15 February.
What we found: At first, we divided the viral clip into multiple screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.
It led us to a video on X by ANI which carried the same clip as the viral video. However, the audio was not the same.
He said that although he is a politician, sports should remain separate from politics, with diplomats handling diplomacy and players focusing on the game.
He emphasised protecting the integrity of sports and expressed hope that cricket moves forward positively, with everyone supporting their own team.
This led us to run the viral clip on AI-detection tool Deepfake-O-Meter which revealed that the video was AI-generated.
Here are the results by Deepfake-O-Meter.
(Source: Deepfake-O-Meter)
Additionally, Tharoor’s voice in the viral clip sounds muffled and recored over the viral clip.
Conclusion: The viral clip is created using artificial intelligence and is not real as claimed.
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