Several social media accounts belonging to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) shared a heavily manipulated video of Pankaj Tripathi, with a false claim that it showed the Bollywood actor campaigning against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the Delhi assembly election next year.
BOOM found that the video was created by altering a public service ad made by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), where the actor is seen starring in an awareness campaign advertisement against financial frauds.
The audio track of the video has been overlaid in parts with an AI generated voice clone of the actor.
The official Facebook page of Aam Aadmi Party Rajasthan shared the video with a Hindi caption that translates to, "Tell BJP people, 'I am not a fool…'"
(Original Text in Hindi: BJP वालों को कहें- "मैं मूर्ख नहीं हूं…")
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The same video was also shared by several AAP supporters on X.
Click here to view one such post and here for an archive.
Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search; this led to the Facebook page of Corcoise Films, a production house, which posted the original video on November 8, 2024.
The original video shows Tripathi acting in a public awareness campaign. He can be seen urging people not to fall for messages claiming they have won a lottery and asking them to share their UPI PIN to receive the prize money. The post mentioned that the advertisement was created by the production house for the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and their 'UPI Chalega' (UPI will work) ad campaign.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
We found that the same advertisement was posted on the official UPI Chalega Instagram page on September 23, 2024.
Click here to view the post.
Additionally, a fake political poster with text stating 'Vote for BJP' has been digitally added on to the screen of the mobile phone seen in the ad.
'Substantial Evidence of Manipulation'
We also tested the viral video using TrueMedia's AI detector tool, designed to help journalists detect AI-generated content.
A 'Voice Anti-Spoofing Analysis' test on the tool also found substantial evidence, with 85 percent confidence, that the audio in the video was generated by an AI audio generator. Click here to view the result.
Furthermore, we culled relevant portions of the audio track which talk about BJP and votes and tested the clips on Hiya- an AI voice detection tool, which detected the audio clips as AI generated.