A digitally altered video purportedly showing United States Senator Richard Blumenthal calling India a failed state is being falsely shared on social media as real footage of a press address by the senator.
BOOM found that the video has been digitally altered. The video shows a mismatch between the audio and Blumenthal's lip movements, and an AI detection tool confirmed it as synthetic.
The Claim:
The 19-second video in which Blumenthal can be heard saying the Indian economy is collapsing and the military cannot win is being falsely shared on social media as an authentic video.
Archive available here.
What We Found:
1) Original video of Blumenthal asking China and India 'to clean up their act': We ran a reverse image search and traced the video to a news report, and Blumenthal does not make the remarks heard in the viral video at any point. In the original video, he warned India and China against buying Russian oil and gas, saying they should “buy your oil and gas somewhere else”. He made this statement after the US House of Representatives passed a bill authorising US President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on India and other countries buying Russian oil and gas.
2) Results from AI detection tools: Blumenthal's jaw movement appears unnatural in the viral video, a common characteristic of deepfakes. We also ran the video through Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector tool, which flagged it as AI-generated.