Pooja Chaudhuri, Eliot Higgins
India and Pakistan have been trading blows in the wake of a militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.
On May 7, India said it had launched missile strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistan – which denies any involvement in the April attack on the tourists, most of whom were Indian – then claimed to have shot down Indian drones and jets.
Claims and counterclaims of ongoing strikes and attacks have been forthcoming from both sides. Some have been difficult to immediately and independently verify, creating a vacuum that has enabled the spread of disinformation.
For example, on May 8, a deepfake video of US President Donald Trump appearing to state that he would “destroy Pakistan” was quickly debunked by Indian fact-checkers. Its impact was therefore minimal.
However, the same cannot be said of another deepfake video spotted by Bellingcat and, by the time of publication, at least one Pakistani outlet.
The altered video had been shared on X (formerly Twitter) nearly 700,000 times at the time of publication and purports to show a General in the Pakistani army, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, saying that Pakistan had lost two of its aircraft.
A Community Note was later added to the video on X detailing it as an “AI generated deepfake”.
However, several Indian media companies had already picked up and ran with the story, including large outlets like NDTV. Other established news media that featured quotes from the altered footage in their coverage include The Free Press Journal, The Statesman and Firstpost.
Bellingcat was able to debunk the video by finding another clip of the same press conference from last year. The video confirms that a different audio was added over the original footage, with Chaudhry’s lips appearing to sync with the altered audio.
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