Facebook has removed a "deepfake" video claiming to show Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy giving in to Russian demands and urging citizens to lay down their arms.
The video circulated on social media before it was flagged as fake; a summary also appeared on a Ukrainian news station after it was reportedly hacked.
"Earlier today, our teams identified and removed a deepfake video claiming to show President Zelensky issuing a statement he never did. It appeared on a reportedly compromised website and then started showing across the internet," Meta's head of security Nathaniel Gleicher said in a post on Twitter. "We've quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy against misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at other platforms."
Facebook owner Meta’s community standards prohibit so-called deepfakes from being spread on its platform, and it removes such posts under its guidelines on manipulated media.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence later released a video from the real Zelenskiy apparently dismissing the footage as a “childish provocation”.
“We are not going to lay down any weapons until our victory,” he said.
Experts have warned in recent years of the possible impact of deepfakes, realistic forgeries that can be created using deep learning.
Ukrainian officials previously warned of the dangers of deepfakes,with its military intelligence agency putting out a short video alleging that the Kremlin was preparing a stunt involving one.
The video, which was poorly edited, drew widespread ridicule online, with posters pointing out the visual inconsistencies such as the proportions of the fake Zelenskiy’s head in relation to his body, the discrepancies between the skin tone on Zelenskiy’s neck and face, the odd accent in the video, and the pixelation around his head.
But it could be a harbinger of things to come.
Nina Schick, the author of Deepfakes, said the video looked like "an absolutely terrible faceswap," referring to programs that can digitally graft one person's face onto another's body.
“Expect fakes like this to become easier to produce while appearing highly authentic,” she said. – Additional reporting: Reuters
