Within hours, a fake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on citizens to surrender to Russia went viral.
The blatantly deep fake footage shows the Ukrainian head of state addressing the nation and encouraging his compatriots to “lay down their arms”. At the time of writing, the tweet that launched it has over 114,000 views.
Zelensky’s face has been modified using artificial intelligence, as happens with all deepfake clips, only here the rendering is really bad. Despite this, there are those who believe in the genuineness of the movie.
“This is the first deepfake used in warfare, intentionally made to be deceptive,” Sam Gregory, director of Witness, a group of human rights activists , told Euronews .
“It’s not an effective deepfake, partly because it’s not extremely well done, but also because Ukraine has done masterful pre-bunking work to quickly disprove the content,” Gregory explained. Suffice it to say that earlier this month, Ukrainian ground forces had warned citizens to be aware of potential manipulated videos that could have shouted for surrender.
“The goal is to disorient, sow panic and incite our troops to withdraw. Rest assured: Ukraine will not capitulate,” the Kiev government said days ago.
“The only ones who should give up their weapons are Russian soldiers,” Zelensky stressed in the afternoon, responding to the news of the deepfake shortly before remotely intervening in the US Congress.
To spread the deepfake, hackers hired from Moscow hacked the transmissions of Ukrainian channels Ukraine 24 and Today, launching the “surrender” message. A trivial and somewhat clumsy attempt to try to bring a conflict to Putin’s side that is proving to be a major headache for the Kremlin.
In the photo, screen of the deepfake: it can be seen that Zelensky’s face has been copy-pasted and it is artificial