The Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) analysed a video that apparently shows Rajat Sharma, India TV editor-in-chief and chairperson, and Gautam Adani, founder and chairperson of the Adani Group, promoting a financial investment platform supposedly backed by the Indian government. 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.
The two-minute-and-34-second video in English was discovered by the DAU during social media monitoring; it was visible as a reel on the platform without an accompanying post. The details of the account which posted it were not displayed. We do not have any evidence to suggest whether this suspicious video originated from an account on Facebook or elsewhere.
The video has been packaged like a talk show. It opens with a setting similar to a courtroom scene. Mr. Adani is apparently seated in a chair in a mock witness box while Mr. Sharma stands in front of him; a woman occupies the seat of a judge and another seems to be the stenographer. The visuals then alternate between the two men; it appears that Sharma is asking questions of Adani about the supposed financial platform.
Captions in white visible in the lower half of the video frame relay the audio script in English. Below that, bold static text graphics also in English can be seen throughout; the first set of words set in white against a green background read: “Guarantees Income”. The following text set in black against a white background with numbers highlighted in green and red, reads: “Gautam Adani Guarantees Income of 25 Lakh Rupees With An Investment Of ₹ 22,000”.
Sharma is captured in a medium close-up in the video; his eye movements and body language suggest that he’s looking at someone in front of him. Adani's visuals alternate between a medium close-up and a wider medium frame, which includes more details of his body as well as the backdrop. His gaze seems to shift from the front to sideways and his hands also move in an animated manner as if he’s addressing someone in those directions.
The backdrop for both Adani and Sharma appears to have a wood finish. However, Sharma’s backdrop also includes part of the Indian flag, some books, and a woman’s head.
A male voice recorded over Sharma’s video track claims that Indians have “lately” seen frequent “advertisements” where Adani appears “personally” to “guarantee a monthly income of 25 lakh rupees using the quantum A.I. platform”. The voice adds that there is doubt among people about the legitimacy of the platform and asks Adani to clarify.
Another male voice recorded over Adani’s video track advises that “fraudulent links” should not be used and the only “official” link is the one “below this video”. The same voice uses the first person to “guarantee” “earning” through the link. No link is visible below the video though.
The voice further claims that the “project is supported by the government of India and the “cabinet of ministers” and that “more than 1,000 Indians are already earning” the promised monthly income; and “everything is fully transparent and simple”. It touts “HDFC Bank” and “State Bank of India”—both reputed Indian banks— among “developers” of the “trading platform” and claims that they will “act as guarantors” to ensure that “participants will receive consistent profits”.
Around the midway mark the video cuts to Sharma’s visuals, the same male voice heard in the previous segment apparently featuring him can be heard again, this time asking whether “any Indian citizen can join and receive this kind of guaranteed income?”.
A voice in the following segment with Adani’s visuals responds to the question confirming that is the case. His visuals continue till the end of the video but for a cutaway of Sharma in between; and the voice heard in this segment is the same as that heard in the previous segment purportedly featuring him.
A sense of urgency is conveyed by that voice as it says that the “registration is open until the end of today” and states that the “key is to join in time and activate your account.” It repeats the investment amount mentioned in the text graphics and declares in first person: “I personally use the platform and have earned 30 lakh rupees this month.”
The voice identifies the platform as “Quantum A.I.”, which it claims is linked to a “trading robot” that will “automatically begin trading on the stock market”. It further asserts that “there are no age restrictions” and “even retirees are receiving stable passive income”.
The video ends with the voice, yet again, directing users to the “official link”. It urges viewers to share their contact details, following which some “representative” will supposedly “get in touch”, “answer questions” and provide “access to the platform”.
The overall video quality is good. The synchronisation between the speakers’ lip movements and the audio track can be discerned and seems well done but for a slight lag in some instances. In some frames the left side of Adani’s collar appears to meld into the skin-fold under his chin.
As the speakers appear to open their mouths in their respective segments, black patches instead of teeth are visible in most frames. The lower set of teeth visible in some frames are reduced to oddly-shaped patches. Sharma’s lower set of teeth and lower lip overlap in one frame.
We compared the voice attributed to Sharma and Adani, respectively, in the video with their recorded speeches and interviews available online. The voice attributed to Adani compares well with his real voice samples, the intonation is also somewhat similar but the accent is western, unlike his natural accent.
In most of Sharma’s recorded videos he can be heard speaking in Hindi, unlike the voice attributed to him which is in English. There is similarity in the voices but the accent is difficult to compare given the language difference. The cadence and intonation are also different and the pronunciation of the word “lakh” sounds especially odd; the overall delivery is monotonous.
We undertook a reverse image search using screenshots from the video and traced both Adani’s and Sharma’s visuals to this video published Jan. 7, 2023 from the official YouTube channel of India TV, a Hindi news channel in India led by Sharma.
The clothing and body language of Sharma and Adani in the video we reviewed and the one we traced are identical; the backdrop is similar but not identical as more zoomed-in frames have been used in the video we reviewed, cropping out some details. The audio track in the video we traced is in Hindi; the content in the two videos is different.
The English and Hindi version of the India TV logo appears at regular intervals in the top-right corner of the video frame throughout. In the bottom right corner an arrangement of graphics alternates between major time zones with a corresponding digital clock and the websites associated with the channel below. The video we traced is an episode of the channel’s flagship talk show “Aap Ki Adalat” in which Sharma interviews Adani, and the time apparently relates to the local broadcast time in different time zones.
Across the bottom of the video frame bold static graphics in white set against an orange background read “big news” and next to it quotes from Adani's interview are highlighted in white text in Hindi set against a blue background.
None of the graphics from the source video are visible in the doctored video. Given that short clips from the source video seem to have been lifted to create the doctored video, it is possible that the bold, colourful graphics seen in the lower-third of that video have been placed there to hide the graphics from the source video.
The cutaways of other subjects featured in the source video are not part of the doctored video. And the visual anomaly of Adani’s collar appearing to meld into the skin-fold under his chin in the doctored video does not appear in the source video.
The tone and messaging in this video, including the suggestion of making an initial investment of 22,000 rupees, is similar to that repeatedly used in several A.I.-manipulated financial scam videos that we have debunked.
This is also not the first time that such deceptive content has been fabricated by misusing Adani’s visuals with synthetic audio, or a reference to “Quantum A.I.” has been made— such as here and here— to mislead people about investment schemes or platforms.
To discern the extent of A.I. manipulation in the video we reviewed, 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 99 percent probability that the audio track in the video was generated or modified using A.I.
Hive AI’s deepfake video detection tool highlighted a few markers of A.I. manipulation in the video but only on Adani’s face. However, their audio detection tool indicated that the entire audio track is A.I.-generated.
We ran the audio track through the advanced audio deepfake detection engine of Aurigin.ai, a Swiss deeptech company. The result that returned gave a 100 percent confidence to the audio track being A.I.-generated.
We further put the audio track through the A.I. speech classifier of ElevenLabs, a company specialising in voice A.I. research and deployment. The results that returned indicated that there is a 98 percent probability that the audio was generated using their platform, categorising the overall result as “very likely”. A further analysis by the team established that the audio track is synthetic or A.I.-generated.
To get an 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 and video detection models. The results that returned indicated that the audio track is likely A.I.-generated and the video track appears to be A.I.-synthesised.
They stated that a lip-sync technique was used to manipulate and synchronise the pixels with the audio clip. They added that their video detectors have given a low confidence score, which is likely due to the use of a post-processing enhancement technique in the video.
They noted that there were clear signs that a voice cloning technique was used to generate the audio track; and the monotonous nature of the sound validated that further.
To get expert analysis 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 70 deepfake detection algorithms for audio analysis.
Of the 22 predictive models, seven gave a higher probability of the video being fake and the remaining 15 gave a lower probability of the video being fake. Of the 70 predictive models, 10 gave a higher probability of the audio being fake, while the remaining 60 gave a lower probability of the audio being fake.
In their report, the team noted that both the subjects appear to have shifting mouth shapes and their teeth also seem to vary in number. They highlighted several time codes in the video where the subjects appear to have no teeth at all or their teeth seem to overlap with their lips, something we mentioned above as well.
They also pointed to a specific time code where Adani’s neck seems to overlap with his shirt collar, they added that this resulted in blurred boundary lines that appeared unnatural.
The GOODS team also corroborated our observations about the respective voice of the subjects seeming to lack natural tone and cadence variations characteristic of human voices. They added that this is particularly evident through the unnaturally long pauses that often occur in between sentences; to illustrate this they shared a specific time code where Adani is purportedly talking. In conclusion, the team stated that the video is likely manipulated via artificial intelligence.
On the basis of our observations and expert analyses, we can conclude that Sharma’s and Adani’s visuals were used with A.I.-generated audio to peddle a false narrative about them promoting a dubious financial investment platform in a bid to scam the public.
(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.
