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| Facebook removes deepfake video of Ukrainian president |
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has removed a fake video in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an unpublished statement calling on Ukrainians to lay down their weapons and give them to Russia.
Ukrainian news site TV24 broadcast the video for the first time after it was hacked.
The videos show Zelensky standing behind the presidential podium and in front of the backdrop, both showing the national emblem of Ukraine.
Wearing a green shirt and speaking Ukrainian, Zelensky appears to be asking Ukrainians to lay down their arms in the weeks-long war with Russia.
Meta's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, posted a series of tweets announcing the video's removal from the company's platform.
"Our team has identified and removed a deep fake video showing President Zelensky making statements he did not make," he said. It appeared on a hacked website and then appeared on the Internet. We've reviewed and immediately removed this video for violating our policies and reported it to our colleagues on other platforms.
The Ukrainian government issued a statement earlier this month urging soldiers and civilians to stop if they came across a video of Zelensky on the Internet, particularly as he announced his surrender to a Russian invasion.
Facebook bans deepfakes in 2020
The Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications said in a statement that the Russian government is likely to use deepfake technology to urge Ukrainians to surrender.
As the statement states, it is almost impossible to distinguish between videos created with these technologies and real videos. If you watch videos like these, you must know that they are fake. The purpose of this is to confuse the minds of the citizens, sow panic and mistrust, and incite our forces to retreat.
After the deepfake video went viral on the Internet, Zelensky posted a video on his official Instagram account exposing the fakeness of the video.
And about recent provocations, including the recommendation to lay down arms, he said: “I recommend the army of the Russian Federation to lay down arms and return home. We are defending Ukraine back home.
Facebook banned deepfakes and other manipulated videos from its platform ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.
This policy covers content generated by artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms that may mislead users.