New Delhi: Amid the ongoing crisis between Ukraine and Russia, Meta, formerly Facebook, has taken down a deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy where he was seen surrendering to the Russian invasion. The clip that was being circulated a statement was one he never made and it showed him asking Ukrainians to “lay down arms”, the media has reported.
The video shows what appears to be Volodymyr Zelenskyy standing behind a podium saying: "It turned out to be not so easy being the president". He goes on to declare that he has "decided to return Donbas" in eastern Ukraine to Russia and that his army's efforts in the war "have failed", according to a report published by Sky News. The video shows a fabricated Ukrainian president speaking behind a podium announcing that Ukraine has “decided to return Donbas” to Russia and that his country's war efforts had failed.
The deepfake video is fabricated and is easy to spot -- Zelenskyy's head in the video is disproportionately big for the body and it sits at an awkward angle, the report added. His head also looks more pixelated than the rest of the body which again is easy to spot.
It should be noted that Meta has identified and removed the deepfake. The company's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, posted a tweet thread late on Wednesday: “Earlier today, our teams identified and removed a deepfake video claiming to show President Zelensky issuing a statement he never did. It appeared on a reportedly compromised website and then started showing across the internet."
"We've quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy against misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at other platforms," the top Meta executive added.
Meanwhile, a translator employed with Sky News said that the voice in the deepfake video was deeper and slower than Zelenskyy's normal voice. The Ukrainian president later issued his own comment on the deepfake on his official Instagram account.