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The Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) analysed a video that apparently shows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and N. R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of tech giant Infosys, promoting a financial investment project. After running the video through A.I. detection tools and getting our expert partners to weigh in, we were able to conclude that the video was fabricated using A.I.-generated audio.
A Facebook link to the two-minute-and-25-second video in English was sent to the DAU tipline for assessment. The video was published from an account with a display picture of a woman. In their profile details they indicate that the account belongs to an “advertising agency” based in California, U.S.A. We don’t have any evidence to suggest whether this suspicious video originated from this account or from another. The video is not available on that link anymore.
The same display picture and details were used by the Facebook accounts that had uploaded the fake videos which we debunked through our previous two reports— this and this. All the three accounts mention California as their location but their street addresses are different. We cannot say if either of these accounts are linked in any way.
The video opens with a 22-second clip that apparently shows Mr. Modi standing behind a podium with two microphones placed in front. His head and hands move in an animated manner, and his gaze shifts in different directions as he seems to be addressing a crowd. A white display screen, with colourful graphics and words in Gujarati flashing from time-to-time, can be seen in the background.
Bold, static text graphics in English appear at the top and bottom of the video frame, and stay visible throughout. The messaging at the top conveys that Mr. Murthy supposedly designed the purported project following Modi’s instruction. The text at the bottom claims that every “citizen of India who invests 21,000 rupees” in the supposed financial project “will receive 1,500,000 rupees in the first month”.
A male voice recorded over Modi’s video track rephrases what is conveyed through the text graphics, adding that Indians need to open some sort of an account to make the suggested sum of money. It claims that the project is Murthy’s brainchild and “automatically increases” the funds of users.
The following segment, which continues till the end, shows Murthy in a medium close-up seated on a sofa while holding a microphone, which he switches between his hands. The movement of his hands and body makes it appear that he is trying to maintain eye contact with more than one person. His backdrop is distinct from that seen in Modi’s segment, it comprises a blue background with bold words in white which are partially visible.
A male voice recorded over Murthy’s video track claims that the supposed “automated system” has been in the works for two years and is already “generating extra income” for thousands of Indians. It promises daily earnings of “50,000 rupees” and monthly returns to the tune mentioned in the text graphics. It suggests that there are some “strong participant statistics” that confirm how peoples’ lives have changed through the supposed financial project, however, no such statistics are shared in the video.
The voice declares that the purported initiative is powered by artificial intelligence and that the “algorithm does all the hard work”. It states that within the first month the users’ returns would far exceed their salary, and attempts to qualify that claim by referring to “personal experience”.
A sense of urgency is conveyed by that voice as it asserts that, “registration may close in coming days” because of “high interest” and that this “opportunity” cannot be offered to every Indian. The video ends on a sombre note, with the voice suggesting that the “methodology” behind the purported program is “designed to help ordinary people of India improve their lives and cope with financial difficulties caused by inflation and rising costs.”
There are multiple jump cuts in both the segments of the video causing the head and upper body of Modi and Murthy to move abruptly in some frames. This makes it evident that each segment has been created by stitching together short clips.
The video quality of Modi’s segment is especially poor, despite that his imperfect lip-sync is visible. His lips seem to move unnaturally fast and the movement continues even when the audio pauses momentarily. In one frame, the left side of his mouth seems unnaturally inflated, distorting the shape of his lips. The area stretching from below his nose to the chin appears to quiver.
In Murthy’s segment, his lip movements appear somewhat aligned to the audio track with attempts at a forced alignment visible through jump cuts. In several frames, as he moves the microphone closer to his mouth it appears to merge either with his jawline or chin. In one frame, when his other hand—the one without the microphone—gets closer to his face it seems to blend into the face.
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Modi’s teeth appear as an off-white patch in some frames while a brownish patch is visible in some other frames instead of the teeth. Even that off-white patch becomes partially visible in a few other frames as the shape of his lips appears to distort. Though the video quality of Murthy’s segment is better, his teeth too appear blurry. The lower set appears like an off-white patch, lacking definition, and the upper set seems to appear and disappear between frames with a faint yellowish-white patch visible in some frames.
The voice attributed to Modi and Murthy, respectively, bears some resemblance to their real voice when compared to the voice heard in their recorded videos available online. However, their natural accents do not come through in the audio, it sounds hastened and does not carry the pauses characteristic of their delivery. The voice track recorded over Modi’s segment somewhat captures his signature voice modulation but the one for Murthy sounds flat.
We undertook a reverse image search using screenshots from the video. Modi’s clips were traced to this video published on May 12, 2022 from the official YouTube account of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an Indian political party of which Modi is a leader. Murthy’s clips were traced to this video published on April 3, 2025 from the official YouTube account of the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai, an Indian business school.
The clothing and body language of Modi and Murthy in the video we reviewed and the videos we were able to locate are identical. However, their respective backdrops look slightly different because the clips of Modi and Murthy used in the manipulated version are more zoomed-in with portions of the background cropped out. The footage in the source videos features other subjects as well but none of them are part of the doctored video.
Modi speaks in Hindi and Murthy speaks in English in their respective original videos; neither of them mention any financial scheme. There are no text graphics in either of the original videos but both carry logos. The official logo of the BJP is visible in the lower right corner of the frame in Modi’s original video; and the Great Lakes Institute logo can be seen in the top and bottom right of the frame in Murthy’s original.
This video seems to be yet another one in the string of financial scam videos that we have recently debunked and pointed to above, where similar numbers, language, and sentiment has been used to peddle a get-rich-quick-scheme.
To discern the extent of A.I. manipulation in the video under review, we put it through A.I. detection tools.
The voice tool of Hiya, a company that specialises in artificial intelligence solutions for voice safety, indicated that there is a seven percent probability of the audio track in the video having been generated or modified using A.I.
Hive AI’s deepfake video detection tool pointed to several markers of manipulation in the segment featuring Murthy but did not indicate any manipulation in Modi’s segment. Their audio detection tool did not detect A.I. manipulation in most of the audio track but for a 10-second segment in the speech purported to be Murthy’s.
For a further analysis on the audio track we put it through the A.I. speech classifier of ElevenLabs, a company specialising in voice A.I. research and deployment. Their classifier returned results as “very unlikely”, suggesting that there is a high probability that the audio track in the video was not generated using their platform.
We also ran the audio track from the video through Deepfake-O-Meter, an open platform developed by Media Forensics Lab (MDFL) at UB for detection of A.I.-generated image, video, and audio. The tool provides a selection of classifiers that can be used to analyse media files.
We chose seven audio detectors, out of which three gave strong indicators of A.I. manipulation in the audio. AASIST (2021) and RawNet2 (2021) focus on detecting audio impersonations, voice clones, replay attacks, and other forms of audio spoofs. The Linear Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (LFCC) - Light Convolutional Neural Network (LCNN) 2021 model classifies genuine versus synthetic speech to detect audio deepfakes.
RawNet3 (2023) allows for nuanced detection of synthetic audio while RawNet2-Vocoder (2023) and RawNet2-Vocoder-V1 (2023) are useful in identifying synthesised speech. Whisper (2023) is designed to analyse synthetic human voices.
To get another expert to weigh in on the video, we reached out to our partners at RIT’s DeFake project. Kelly Wu from the team highlighted several artefacts in the video that were indicative of A.I. manipulation.
Ms. Wu pointed to a specific moment where Modi’s mouth appears closed while the accompanying audio can still be heard, adding that the generated mouth frames have a jitter effect. In our analysis above we also pointed to the quiver that we noticed in Modi’s segment.
For Murthy’s segment, Wu noted that in several instances artefacts became visible when objects such as the microphone or the hand obstructed the regenerated face region.
To get another expert analysis on the video, we escalated it to the Global Deepfake Detection System (GODDS), a detection system set up by Northwestern University’s Security & AI Lab (NSAIL).
The video was analysed by two human analysts and run through 22 deepfake detection algorithms. Of those, eight predictive models gave a higher probability of the video being fake and the remaining 14 indicated a lower probability of the video being fake.
In their report, the team echoed our observations about visual artefacts in Modi’s segments. They added that the facial features being blurry and misshapen are common among artificially generated media samples. They also pointed to Modi's hands being blurry and often appearing unnatural.
Similar to our observation, they noted that Murthy’s microphone frequently blends into his jaw. They also pointed to an abnormal "cut" in Murthy’s segment in one particular frame, which, according to them, is a sign of possible manipulation.
In the overall verdict, the GODDS team concluded that the video is likely fake and possibly generated with artificial intelligence.
Based on our findings and analyses from experts, we can conclude that separate video tracks of Modi and Murthy have been stitched together and used with synthetic audio to fabricate yet another financial scam video.
(Written by Debraj Sarkar and Rahul Adhikari, edited by Pamposh Raina.)
Kindly Note: The manipulated video/audio files that we receive on our tipline are not embedded in our assessment reports because we do not intend to contribute to their virality.
