A 24-second clip of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, showing him in a podcast and using Gen-Z lingos, has gone viral on social media.
In the viral clip, the host asks: “As an all-time rizzler and sigma from Kerala, what are some changes you need in our politics?”
Tharoor in reply purportedly said: “ What if instead of Pinarayi Vijayan we vision we have, freaky Vijayan. Instead of conducting elections, we conduct an edging competition between Freaky Vijayan and Suresh Gopi for Ohio. Instead of giving the right to vote, we give the right to Rizz up a level 5 gyatt. And to calm down the opposition, we can bribe them with premium Kochi femboys.”
The above post can be seen here (archive)
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the video in question, and found it to be digitally altered.
At first glance, the video seems authentic and the voice of Shashi Tharoor seemed identical. However, upon closely observing the video frame-by-frame, we noticed the discrepancies in the lip sync.
On putting the video through Hive Moderation — a tool designed to detect AI-generated content — it was analysed that the viral video is 55.8% likely to be AI-generated.
Putting the viral video keyframes through the Reverse Image Search, the NM team traced the original video, dated May 10th, 2024, on the official YouTube channel — Think School, which has over 3.92 million subscribers.
On comparing both videos, it was evident that the viral clip was extracted from Shashi Tharoor’s May 10th interview. However, the words spoken by Tharoor in his voice in the viral clip were superimposed using deepfake technology.
On closely analysing the original 59:54-minute video and its transcript, we discovered that the host never addressed Tharoor as a rizzler, and the MP from Thiruvananthapuram did not speak what is heard in the viral clip.
Thus, it’s confirmed that the video in question is manipulated using deepfake technology.
