The Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) analysed a video that apparently shows Rahul Gandhi, leader of Indian National Congress (INC) party, and India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman promoting a financial project— a supposed collaboration between the Indian government, and billionaire mogul Elon Musk. 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 with A.I.-generated audio.
A Facebook link to the nearly four-minute video in English was discovered by the DAU through social media monitoring. The video, embedded in a post, was published on Aug. 27, from an account with the display name of “India Info24” created on July 13, 2025. The profile details mention that the account is associated with a “news and media website”. The video is not available on the same link anymore.
We don’t have any evidence to suggest that this suspicious video originated from the aforementioned account or another.
The video has two distinct segments. The first segment, lasting about a minute, opens with Mr. Gandhi apparently accusing Ms. Sitharaman of hiding a financial project from Indian citizens followed by her supposed response. The facial expressions and tone of the voices with their respective visuals creates an impression of a tense exchange.
The seating arrangement, cutaways of parliamentarians and their appearance in the frames featuring Gandhi and Sitharaman suggest that the visuals are from the Indian Parliament. However, the colour of the seats of the purported speakers in their respective frames is different and they never appear in the same frame, this indicates that the footage is probably from both houses of the parliament.
Both politicians have been captured standing in a medium close-up, apparently addressing people in front and around them as their hands move in an animated fashion and their body and gaze shifts. In one frame, Gandhi holds a piece of paper, which seems to have shiny edges with most characters on it unintelligible though "Quantum AI” is vaguely legible.
In another frame as Sitharaman appears to bend and then stands back up a visual glitch is noticeable. The outline of the face of Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, seated next to her appears to distort for a brief moment; this could be a result of digital manipulation.
A male voice in English recorded in first person over Gandhi’s video track calls Sitharaman a “thief” for “making money in secret” and demands that she “tell everyone the truth and provide access” or else her resignation would be demanded.
The female voice with Sitharaman’s visuals, also in English, retorts in first person that “no one is hiding” the supposed application for the project. It adds that the supposed project is a “government funded development” purportedly “created” by Mr. Musk and that it has gone through a “thorough testing phase”. She can be seen gesturing to someone behind her while referring to Musk, although he is not in the frame or featured anywhere in the video.
The female voice reassures that the project is “ready” and “an official video presentation” from Sitharaman will soon be made public to explain how citizens can make money. The segment ends with the voice pointedly saying that Gandhi’s “accusations are baseless.”
The second part of the video, which forms a bulk of the video, also shows Sitharaman captured in a medium close-up but in a different setting, seated on a chair with a microphone, water bottles, and a tumbler in the foreground, and floral curtains in the background. She constantly looks at someone or something in front of her while occasionally looking down, as if reading from something. The voice with her visuals talks about the supposed financial scheme.
Three sets of graphics appear at the bottom of the frame throughout the video with the middle set having different content in the two video segments. The top-most set—black text in English set against a white background—presents the audio transcript as the video plays. The bottom-most set mimics a ticker, alternating between scrolling text —“official registration link”— in yellow and downward pointing arrows also in yellow set against a red background.
For the first segment, the middle set of graphics—bold red text on a yellow background— comprise a static message that reads: “Important information for the people of India! A secret source of income has been revealed that allows you to earn ₹25.5 lakh per month.”
In the second segment, the middle set of graphics set against a red background are a combination of logos, text, and numbers in white. One set of logos resemble those of Reliance Industries Limited, HDFC Bank, Infosys, and Asian Paints, which are among the top performing companies in the stock market. Below those are logos resembling those of PayPal, VISA, and Mastercard, companies that facilitate digital payments globally.
The numbers are prefixed by a rupee symbol and correspond to three different headings —“minimum investment”, “today’s earnings”, and “monthly income”; the numbers keep changing only for the latter two while for the first one remain at “22,000”.
The female voice in the second segment is also recorded in first person, it has a mellow tone compared to the one in the first segment. It announces that “anyone who listens to me right now can receive 5,95,000 rupees by the end of this week and start earning a stable income of 25,50,000 rupees per month.” It states that the “access” to the supposed project is “absolutely free” and that anyone —“from students to pensioners”— can make money.
A sense of urgency is conveyed by that voice when it states that “tomorrow there may be no available spots left”. It assures that the supposed platform has “already been tested” and urges viewers to invest 22,000 rupees so that the “system” can start “trading” and bring them “stable income”.
Crediting “advanced quantum A.I.” for the supposed initiative, the voice claims that Sitharaman, the person purported to be the face of the voice, has invested 22,000 rupees and made 25,50,000 rupees in a month. It further claims that Sitharaman would’ve paid the initial investment amount on behalf of all Indian citizens had it not been for the “Indian law”, which mandates that the “deposit must be made by the account holder”.
The same female voice urges viewers to register on some “link” below the video to be connected to a supposed “project representative”. The video ends with the voice stating that this “link” is the “official” one and asserts “not to miss this opportunity”.
We found a link in the body of the Facebook post carrying the video. Only for the purposes of this report we clicked on the link (we would like to caution our readers against clicking on suspicious links). We were led to a website that apparently sells jewellery, it has multiple functional sections; prices were mentioned against each piece of jewellery. The web address, however, seemed odd as it did not reflect the name associated with the supposed jewellery brand.
In both video segments there appears to be a slight lag between the audio and the video, however, despite that there seems to be a fair bit of lip-synchronisation in the video. Gandhi’s teeth are oddly not visible when he appears to be talking; the space between his lips looks dark as his mouth moves. Sitharaman’s teeth seem to disappear and reappear several times throughout the video and in the frames where they do appear they resemble dark patches as they lack definition.
The voice attributed to Gandhi sounds somewhat similar to his real voice as heard in his recorded videos available online. However, the accent sounds foreign and the delivery sounds scripted and robotic, lacking natural pauses and intonation. In the audio track with his visuals some commotion has been captured for a short duration.
For Sitharaman’s audio tracks, some resemblance can be established between her real and purported voice. Her accent and diction also sound somewhat similar. The audio in the first segment manages to capture the voice modulations of an agitated individual, but sounds completely flat and robotic in the second segment.
The pronunciation of “lakh” stands out and sounds odd in both the male and the female voice.
We undertook a reverse image search using screenshots from the video. Gandhi’s clips were traced to this video published on July 1, 2024 from the official YouTube channel of Sansad TV, which broadcasts proceedings of the Indian Parliament. Sitharaman’s clips from the first segment were traced to this video published on July 26, 2023 from the same YouTube channel. The clips from her second segment were traced to this video published on March 17, 2025 from her official YouTube channel.
The clothing and body language of Gandhi and Sitharaman in the video we reviewed and their respective source videos are identical. The backdrops are also the same except that in the video we reviewed some details have been cropped out because more zoomed-in frames have been used. Neither of the two subjects can be found in the other’s original video footage.
Gandhi speaks in a mix of English and Hindi in the original video. The background noise conveying commotion in the doctored video can be heard in this video too. Sitharaman speaks in English in the source videos with only one Hindi word that too in the source video for the first segment. Neither of them talk of any financial platform.
Text graphics with the full name and official title of Sitharaman and Gandhi, respectively, are visible in the lower part of the video frame in their respective original clips from the parliament. Below that the name of the respective presiding speakers is visible. The lowest part of the frame is occupied by a ticker continuously scrolling information, the content of which is different from that seen in the doctored video.
The official logo of Sansad TV can be seen in the top left corner of the frame in the source videos with footage from the parliament. For Sitharaman’s original, the word “live” in bold can be seen below that logo; and a text box with the words “Rajya Sabha” alternating between Hindi and English can be seen in the lower-right corner of the video frame. For Gandhi, a text box with the words “live” in bold can be seen in the upper-right corner of the frame.
Neither the Sansad TV logo nor the other text graphics visible in the source videos appear in the doctored video. And none of the text graphics and other logos visible in the manipulated video are also part of any of the source videos.
Dr. Jaishankar’s face does not distort in the original video. The piece of paper held by Gandhi in the doctored video does not appear in the original; instead he can be seen holding a picture of an Indian deity.
The packaging, tone, and messaging in this video is similar to that repeatedly used in a slew of A.I.-manipulated financial scam videos debunked by the DAU. Only the initial investment amount seems to vary in this video with previous scam videos emphasising on 21,000 rupees as the requirement. This is not the first time that the name “Quantum A.I.” has been used in a suspicious video; it has been used in several scam videos debunked by us such as this and this.
This video is also yet another example of a scam video that peddles a false narrative about the government deliberately keeping information about a supposed lucrative project from Indian citizens.
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 98 percent probability of the audio track in the video having been generated or modified using A.I.
Hive AI’s deepfake video detection tool highlighted several markers of A.I. manipulation in the segment featuring Gandhi and in the segment featuring only Sitharaman. The tool highlighted markers of A.I. manipulation on faces of other subjects as well. Their audio detection tool indicated that but for a 50-second-segment, the entire audio track is A.I.-generated.
We also ran the audio track through the A.I. speech classifier from ElevenLabs, a company specialising in voice A.I. research and deployment. The results that returned indicated that it was “very unlikely” that the audio track used in the video was generated using their platform.
However, when we reached out to ElevenLabs for a comment on the analysis they told us that based on technical signals analysed by them they were able to confirm that the audio track in the video is synthetic or A.I.-generated. They added that they have taken action against the individuals who misused their tools to hold them accountable.
To get further analysis on the video we reached out to ConTrails AI, a Bangalore-based startup with its own A.I. tools for detection of audio and video spoofs.
The team ran the video through audio as well as video detection models. The results that returned suggested signs of A.I. manipulation in the video track and A.I. generation in the audio track.
They stated that lip-sync technique was used to manipulate the lips of the speakers to sync with the speech. They further stated that the voices heard in the audio track match with real voices of the subjects indicating that A.I. voice cloning technique has been used.
To get another expert to weigh in on the video, we escalated it to the Global Online 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, run through 22 deepfake detection algorithms for video analysis, and seven deepfake detection algorithms for audio analysis.
Of the 22 predictive models, six gave a higher probability of the video being fake and the remaining 16 gave a lower probability of the video being fake. Five of the seven predictive models gave a high confidence score to the audio being fake and the remaining two models gave a low confidence score to the audio being fake.
In their report, the team pointed to a timecode where Gandhi’s beard appears to become discoloured when his head turns and moves toward the subject in the background, suggesting that this could indicate “visual overlay discrepancies”.
They added that the video transitions between settings— the first one showing a political debate, then switching to a speech by the second subject— could suggest potential video editing.
They also corroborated our observations about the subjects’ voices lacking natural tonal and cadence variations characteristic of human voices. They noted that the mouth movements and speech audio of the subjects frequently appeared unsynchronised. Pointing to various timescodes, they added that the subjects’ mouths show recurring unnatural distortions throughout the video. In conclusion, the team stated that the video is likely generated via artificial intelligence.
On the basis of our findings and expert analyses, we can conclude that original but unrelated clips of Sitharaman and Gandhi were stitched together with A.I.-generated audio to fabricate a video that peddles a financial scam.
(Written by Debraj Sarkar and Debopriya Bhattacharya, 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:
