← the record
AIAAIC-1093

Deepfake video alleges France opposes Mali military junta

A fake AI-generated video purported to show F rance giving money to Malian political parties to persuade them not to participate in a national consultation set up by the country's military junta. The video showed a television news presenter speaking to camera in a TV studio background and drew on a letter allegedly written by French president Emmanuel Macron saying France would pay EUR 23 million to local political parties if they agreed to support France's presence on the country. The deepfake video was created using AI video creation platform Synthesia and first appeared on the Nabi Malien Den Halala Facebook page. The page is said to regularly publish Russian disinformation. Russian mercenaries have reputedly been active in Mali for several years. Mali's military junta took power in a controversial coup d’état in May 2021. Deepfake Deepfakes (a portmanteau of ' deep learning ' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media. Source: Wikipedia 🔗 System 🤖 Synthesia AI video generation Operator: Nabi Malien Den Halala Developer: Synth esia Country: France; Mali Sector: Politics; Govt - foreign Purpose: Damage reputation Technology: Deepfake - audio, video; Machine learning Issue: Mis/disinformation; Transparency

Date it happened
2022-01-01
Organisation involved
Nabi Malien Den Halala
Product, system or model
Synthesia
Where this came from
Share this incident
XLinkedInFacebookWhatsAppEmail
Attribution

This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.