A video purporting to show news anchor Sudhir Chaudhary predicting a win for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate from West Delhi, Mahabal Mishra, is fake and has been created using an AI-generated voice clone of Chaudhary.
BOOM found that the video is a deepfake and has been created using a voice clone of Sudhir Chaudhary, it also carries fake graphics of an exit poll predicting Mishra's win. Aaj Tak or the India Today Group has not released any exit polls for the Lok Sabha elections yet.
In the video, Chaudhary is seen hosting his show 'Black and White' on Aaj Tak and saying in Hindi, "Today, we will take you through the election mood in Delhi. Starting from West Delhi, our surveys predict that AAP's candidate Mahabal Mishra is leading over Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Kamaljeet Sehrawat. Mishra's popularity is helping him win in the constituency."
An exit poll showing 59% of the seats in Delhi being won by the INDIA bloc and 41% by the BJP is also shown on the screen. A detailed break-up shows 3 seats for the AAP and 2 seats each for the BJP and Congress.
The video was shared on X by AAP's State Vice President in Rajasthan, Kirti Pathak, with the caption, "Now the national media of the country has also accepted that Mahabal Mishra is winning very strongly in West Delhi. Ahead in every survey. It is because of the popularity of @mahabalmishra ji that he is on the lips of the media of the whole country today. You can also watch the video #25_मई_BJP_गई"
(Original text in Hindi: "अब तो देश की नेशनल मीडिया ने भी माना की पश्चिमी दिल्ली में महाबल मिश्रा बेहद मजबूती से जीत रहे है। हर सर्वे में आगे। यह @mahabalmishra जी की लोकप्रियता ही है की आज पुरे देश की मीडिया के जुबान पर हैं। आप भी देखे विडियो #25_मई_BJP_गई")
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The post is also circulating on Facebook with a similar caption.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video has been created using an AI generated voice clone of Sudhir Chaudhary along with fake graphics of an exit poll. Neither Chaudhary, the India Today Group, or its affiliated Axis My India exit poll have made any predictions about the election outcome yet.
We ran a keyword search for Sudhir Chaudhary predicting a win for Mishra and did not find any news reports or other results.
Following this, we scanned the verified X handle of Axis My India that releases its exit polls for the elections in collaboration with India Today. Here, we found many posts debunking false election exit polls, and one press release shared on April 19, 2024 that stated how exit polls would only be released on June 1, 2024, as per ECI guidelines.
We finally ran the audio clip of Sudhir Chaudhary's video through two deepfake detection tools, Itisaar, developed by IIT Jodhpur, and Contrails.AI. According to Itisaar, the audio is a fake "generative AI voice swap", whereas contrails classified the viral video as an "AI Audio Spoof"
