A video of Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, endorsing an investment platform — Google Invest — is being widely circulated on social media. In the video, Pichai states that an investment of ₹20,000 could yield returns of up to ₹1,80,000 per month.
The above post can be seen here (archive).
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the video in question, and found it to be a deepfake.
Closely analysing the video, the NM team identified several discrepancies, including noticeable issues with the lip-sync between the audio and visual elements.
Putting the keyframes of the video through Reverse Image Search, we detected the original video of Sundar Pichai on the official YouTube Originals channel, dated June 8, 2020. Here, Pichai had delivered a “message of hope” to the Class of 2020 graduates.
We also found the visuals in both the original clip and the video in question are quite identical, including Pichai’s clothing and the background. However, in the original 7:23-minute video, Pichai has not mentioned any investment platform.
The Deepfake Analysis Unit (DAU) of the Misinformation Combat Alliance, of which NewsMobile is part of, conducted a thorough examination of the viral video using advanced detection tools, revealing that the video had been manipulated using artificial intelligence. The voice detection tool confirms that the audio is AI-generated, while Hive AI’s detection tool indicates that the visuals were altered with AI (full DAU analysis can be seen here).
Thus, we can conclude saying that the video in question is a deepfake and Sundar Pichai did not endorse any investment platform.
