A viral video of Colonel Sofiya Qureshi claiming she said, "I am Muslim, but not Pakistani. I'm a Muslim, but not a terrorist" is a deepfake.
BOOM analysed the video and found strong evidence of artificial intelligence-aided manipulation in the videos, the same further confirmed by multiple deepfake detection tools.
Indian Army Col. Qureshi joined by Wing Commander Vyomika Singh of the Indian Air Force became the face of Operation Sindoor, India's retaliatory military strike against Pakistan, after appearing in the daily press briefings. Both officers have since gained popularity on social media.
BOOM recently debunked fake X accounts viral as real social media accounts of the officers.
Currently, both India and Pakistan have independently declared a victory over each other.
In the viral video, Qureshi says, "I am Muslim, but not Pakistani. I'm a Muslim, but not a terrorist. Terrorists have no religion. I've taken the pledge to kill all terrorists with my own hands." One of the viral captions being shared with this video read, "How's the Josh," along with "Jai Hind" in Bangla .
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BOOM also received the video on its Tipline number (+917700906588) for verification.
Fact-Check: Video Is A Deepfake
BOOM found multiple indications of the video being a deepfake - such as unnatural and mechanical speaking styles and equally unnatural expressive movements. The lip movements were also out of synchronisation with the voice. All of these indicated a high probability of AI being used to manipulate the viral video.
We ran the video through two AI video detection models on Deepfake-o-meter, an open source detection tool by University at Buffalo's Media Forensics Lab. Both of the AI video detection models provided significant likelihood of the video file being AI-generated.
We also extracted the video, and ran it through a number of AI audio detection models. Most of the AI audio detection models provided significant likelihood of the audio file being AI-generated.
We also ran the audio through the AI audio detection tool Hiya, which provided an equally strong likelihood of the audio being AI-generated.
