The Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) analysed a video in which Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Congress (INC) and member of Parliament, is apparently announcing his exit from the party and from India. After examining the video using A.I. detection tools and escalating it to experts for assessment, we concluded that the audio in the original video had been replaced with fake audio.
In the 28-second clip sent to the DAU tipline for verification, a lot of background noise can be heard with with Mr. Gandhi seemingly speaking in Hindi though his lip movements do not match the words in the accompanying audio.
Using reverse image search tools we were able to trace the original video, which had been posted by The Hindu on the microblogging site X on April 3, 2024. The backdrop, clothing, and body language of Gandhi as well as his surroundings were identical in the original clip as well as the one we analysed. However, in the original video he was speaking in English and not Hindi and his lip movements matched perfectly with his words. The context of the original video was that he was filing his nomination papers to contest the upcoming election from the Lok Sabha constituency of Wayanad in Kerala.
We put the video through A.I. detection tools to discern if the audio in the fabricated video had been produced using generative A.I. The audio detection tool of AI or Not gave a 58 percent probability of the audio having been produced using A.I. The free version of the tool that we accessed can detect the use of A.I. in images and audio.
The other A.I. detection tools including the voice detection tool of Loccus.ai as well as TrueMedia’s deepfake detector, did not give us conclusive results about the use A.I. in the audio for the video we were examining. In this particular case, it could well be that the quality of the video and noise were impacting the results that the tools returned. Hence, we expanded the scope of our investigation and reached out to two of our partners who have their own detection tools.
ConTrails AI, a Bangalore-based startup examined the video and concluded that the speech in the video appeared to be entirely A.I.-generated and that the voice in the video was cloned using A.I. Their analyses also noted that this clip was an example of a cheap audio clone mixed with background sounds to make it sound real.
We also approached IdentifAI, a San Francisco-based deepfake security startup. Using their audio detection software, they went on to examine the authenticity of the audio in the clip.
They generated an audio sample of Gandhi’s voice from two samples of his real voice, and then compared that to the voice from the video under investigation while isolating all the background noise. Based on their analyses and iterative tests they concluded that the video was a poor attempt at putting together an audio deepfake.
They mentioned that the overlay of noise in the video is a deliberate attempt to mask a poor audio deepfake and also to minimise the differences that people might notice between the real and fabricated audio.
Using a heat-map analysis the team tried to compare the real voice and the fabricated voice.
The image on the right with the central red rectangle highlights how the audio sample of Gandhi’s voice created by IdentifAI is different from the audio in the manipulated clip. In the image on the left, the sample of Gandhi’s real voice is compared to the audio sample generated by IdentifAI, the green circles represent the similarities.
Based on all our findings and expert analyses, we can conclude that the Congress leader never said what is being attributed to him and that the video has been doctored using fake audio.
(Written by Debraj Sarkar and edited by Pamposh Raina.)
Kindly Note: The manipulated audio/video files that we receive on our tipline are not embedded in our assessment reports because we do not intend to contribute to their virality.
You can read below the fact-checks related to this piece published by our partners:
AI Voice Clone Video Of Rahul Gandhi’s Resignation Viral Online
Manipulated Video Shared to Claim Rahul Gandhi Resigned From Congress
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