By Obinna Ezenwa
Uploads of a deepfake video of Ukranian President, Volodymyr Zelensky that supposedly showed him yielding to Russia were removed on Wednesday, said Facebook and Youtube.
Vice’s Motherboard noticed that there was an extensive spread of the deepfake online on Wednesday. According to media personnel who reviewed the video, President Zelensky appeared to stand behind a presidential podium and in front of a backdrop, both of which feature the Ukrainian coat of arms. Zelensky spoke in Ukrain, appearing to tell Ukrainians to put down their weapons in the weeks-old war against Russia.
Deepfakes which combine the terms “deep learning” and “fake” are persuasive looking but false video and audio files. Made using cutting-edge and relatively accessible AI technology, they aim to show a real person doing or saying something they did not. Experts have long been concerned that, as they improve, they would be used to spread misinformation.
Meta’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, in a series of posts on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, wrote that the company spotted and removed the video earlier that day. “We’ve quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy against misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at other platforms,” he wrote.
YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said the video and reuploads of it have been removed from the platform because it violates the company’s misinformation policies. “We do allow this video if it provides sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context,” Choi said in a statement.
A Twitter spokesperson said the company is tracking how the video is shared across the social network, and has taken “enforcement action” in cases where it violates company rules (such as its synthetic and manipulated media policy, which forbids users from sharing altered content that may confuse people or lead to harm; in some cases, Twitter may label tweets containing misleading media to give users more context).
While the video doesn’t look tremendously doctored, there are some telltale signs that the video is not what it appears to be. And Zelensky himself appeared in a video posted to an official Ukraine defense account on Twitter, saying he is continuing to defend Ukraine and refusing to lay down weapons against Russia
