A video purportedly showing an aggrieved cattle trader criticising the recent guidelines by the West Bengal government barring animal slaughter without a "fit certificate" is AI-generated.
BOOM found several AI-related inconsistencies, along with AI-detection tool result indicating the video is synthetic.
The state government has issued a public notice ahead of Bakri Eid, under which it brought into effect a 1950 law as well as a Calcutta High Court order from 2018, with which it has banned the slaughter of animals below the age of 14 in the state and without the certification of a vet. Several videos have emerged showing Hindu cattle rearers returning from empty cattle markets without earnings and expressing anger over the restrictions.
The Claim:
The video is being shared on X, claiming that it shows a disgruntled cattle trader complaining about the cattle ban in West Bengal.
In the video, a cattle trader appears to say that he will kill himself because of the lack of sale of cows ahead of Eid. He also says how the Trinamool government was better than the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, as they allowed beef slaughter.
What we found:
1) AI detection tools:
BOOM ran the video through AI detection tools like Hiya Deepfake voice detector.
Hiya results showed that the voice sample was inauthentic and AI-generated.
2) Visual inconsistencies
BOOM spotted several AI-related visual inconsistencies in the video. The faces of people standing in the background are blurred weirdly, a common trait of synthetic videos. The behaviour of human figures standing in the background also appears to be robotic.
