Dr. Md. Yunus, the chief advisor to the interim government of Bangladesh, is the victim of propaganda using artificial intelligence. A Deepfakes video of him has been seen on social media for the past few days where he is heard saying on the gambling site, “I have decided to create a new application for you, Crazy Time is a safe and easy for easy registration. By investing just 5 taka on the first day, you can earn up to 1 lakh taka. “
The concern is that usually Deepfake videos can be identified with the open eye, but in this video, technology has been used in such a way that it is difficult to understand at first glance that the video is fake.
On the other hand, a Deepfakes video of the country’s superstar Shakib Khan has also been circulating on social media where he is heard inviting people to play the Crazy Time game.
Since September, Fact checking institution Dismislab has found nine deepfake videos in over 140 Facebook ads falsely suggesting that Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus, supports gambling apps. Some videos misleadingly show the Nobel laureate promoting gambling.
These ads are problematic for several reasons. First, Bangladesh does not allow gambling ads according to Meta’s policies. Second, the High Court of Bangladesh has banned online gambling advertisements. Third, the AI-generated content in these ads is false and misleading. Despite this, gambling campaigns continue to run on Facebook, violating Meta’s community standards.
“Most of these ads evade Meta’s political ad transparency requirements despite featuring prominent political figures. The platform’s ad review system is failing to detect these violations, allowing the ads to disappear quickly after running and limiting opportunities to verify their false claims” reported Dismisslab.
Minhaj Aman, Head of Research, DismissLab said, “In this case, not only Deepfake audio but video has been used. We think this is more critical then before. We find 130 more sites to spread the ads, means someone push behind the scene and Meta also earn money from the campaign.
“Such campaign mostly runs out of the country. From my previous experiences, i would like to say such ads campaign may be run by Vietnam and Combodia. Infact, there is a connection with hacker in some cases.”
Experts say that to recognize deepfake videos, gestures, lip sync and the context of the video should be looked at. They also urge people to refrain from online gambling.