Media outlet News18, on its official X (formerly Twitter) handle, shared a video report mentioning that National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval "never claimed more Hindus attracked to ISIS than Muslims" (sic)."
What did the report show?: It showed a clip of Doval interacting with some people, which was labelled as a "deepfake" by the media outlet.
What are the facts?: The claim is misleading.
The video of Doval interacting with people actually dates back to 2014, when he said that the ISI has recruited more Hindus than Muslims for intelligence tasks in India.
This means that the media outlet erroneously wrote ISIS instead of ISI. Further, the video of Doval was not a deepfake.
What led us to the truth?: On closely going through the video report, we noticed a standee banner in the background that carried the words "Australia India Institute".
Finding the original video: Taking this forward, we conducted a keyword search on YouTube using the help of the words "Australia India Institute Ajit Doval".
This directed us to the full-version of the interaction uploaded on 20 March 2014 with a title that said, "Ajit Doval: The Challenge of Global Terrorism."
At around the 1:00:06 timestamp, Doval could be heard answering a question about the response to terrorism threats within the country. He said that we have to first establish the legitimacy of the state. He continued by saying that we have to make it clear that there's no question of sparing or appeasing anyone.
Doval said that the minority community should be carried with us. He further mentioned that a joint strategy should be worked out.
He continued, "Let me tell you one thing. The casualties of Islamic terrorism have been 90 percent Muslims, and 10 percent non-Muslims and they are aware of it." Doval highlighted that Muslims fought for India's Independence in 1857 as well.
"Let me tell you one small thing, now that I have been exposed as a man who is this thing. The number of persons that ISI has recruited for intelligence tasks in India, there have been more Hindus than Muslims...We will carry the Muslims with us and we will make it a great country."Ajit Doval, NSA
This makes it clear that the NSA was referring to the ISI and not the ISIS, which the media outlet erroneously added in the video report.
What did detection tools show?: Team WebQoof passed the particular segment from the YouTube video on an AI detection tool named 'Hive Moderation'. It concluded that the clip was "not likely to contain any AI-generated or deepfake content".
We further reached out to the Deepfake Analysis Unit (DAU) to verify the authenticity of the clip. They used multiple tools, which did not find any hints of AI or deepfake in the segment.
The tool concluded that the clip was not AI.
(Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)
Conclusion: This makes it evident that News18's video report is misleading on two separate accounts.
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