A deepfake of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has circulated on social media in recent days. The fake video featured the politician asking the country’s troops to surrender to Russian soldiers, which for more than two weeks has been trying to invade neighboring territory.
Anyone who has seen the original material guarantees that the video is clearly a botched production in the deepfake style, that is, it brings Zelensky’s face “glued” over someone else’s body through manipulations and edits.
However, the possibility that such clips circulate through social networks (and that they become more and more convincing) worries specialists and those responsible for online platforms.
Meta’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, confirmed that Facebook identified and deleted the video. The network has not allowed the publication of deepfakes since 2020 and is betting on tools that automatically detect this clip format.
The video would have been posted for the first time on a website compromised by attackers and even on a Ukrainian news channel that was also allegedly hacked — cyber attacks have been one of the most important fields of the conflict, especially for those looking for information about the conflict. YouTube and Twitter also removed the video, but some screenshots taken show the result.
Later, the Ukrainian president himself published a message on his social networks reinforcing that the video was fake and that resistance to Vladimir Putin’s troops continues.
