Earlier this month, Ukraine's military intel agency issued a warning about the possibility of Russia using deepfake technology to spread disinformation in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. That has now apparently come to pass: Facebook parent Meta has removed a phony clip purporting to show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky surrendering and asking his fellow Ukrainians to do the same, reports Sky News. In the video—which was seen on social media, and on broadcaster Ukraine 24's website and TV station after being hacked—the fake Zelensky confesses, "It turned out to be not so easy being the president," adding that he's going back to Donbas in eastern Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces have "failed."
He then says: "My advice to you is to lay down arms and return to your families. It is not worth it dying in this war. My advice to you is to live. I am going to do the same." The Verge notes the clues that gave away the video being a deepfake, including a head on Zelensky's body that's "comically larger than in real life," excess pixelation around said head, and a much deeper voice than usual emitting from Zelensky's mouth. Meta announced Wednesday that it had removed the video from its platforms and put up a message on its policy regarding "manipulated media," and one expert tells NPR that the video was simply "not very well done."
But some are still concerned the video could still trick viewers, as well as about the potential of better deepfakes as the crisis in Ukraine continues. "This is the first one we've seen that really got some legs, but I suspect it's the tip of the iceberg," Hany Farid, a University of California-Berkeley professor who specializes in digital media forensics, tells the outlet. Zelensky, for his part, quickly got ahead of this particular deepfake, putting out a message Wednesday on Instagram calling it a "childish provocation," along with the caption "We are at home and defending Ukraine," per Sky. "I only advise that the troops of the Russian Federation lay down their arms and return home," he says in the real video. "We are already home, we are defending our land, our children, our families. So, we are not going to lay down any arms until our victory." (More deepfakes stories.)
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