Infosys founder Narayana Murthy's two new deepfake videos, which are being shared on social media, purportedly promoting a so-called investing platform Quantum AI, claiming that the user of this new tech will be able to earn $3,000 (around Rs 2.5 lakh) on the first working day. One of the videos showed a morphed version of Murthy claiming to be working on a Quantum AI project with tech billionaire Elon Musk.
"Today I want to present our new project together with Elon Musk. Quantum AI is the world’s first quantum computing software developed by my team and Elon’s team with a 94% success rate,” the morphed voice said. The deepfake video has been shared on Facebook, which is now deleted.
In the clip, Murthy’s lip movements seem clearly out of sync with the audio – one of the strongest indicators of deepfake videos. The original video is of Murthy speaking at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave held on July 7 in Bengaluru.
On November 8, a second deepfake video with a morphed voice of Murthy speaking about Quantum AI was shared on Facebook. Again, Murthy's English accent differs from the one in the deepfake video. The video is a morphed version of Murthy speaking at the Mindrush event hosted by Business Today on June 24, 2022.
Narayana Murthy has reacted to the deepfake videos and said that he denied any endorsement of the investing platforms and asked people to report such instances to the concerned authorities. He said. “In recent months, there have been several fake news items propagated via social media apps and on various webpages available on internet claiming that I have endorsed or invested in automated trading applications named BTC AI Evex, British Bitcoin Profit, Bit Lyte Sync, Immediate Momentum, Capitalix Ventures etc.The news items appear on fraudulent websites that masquerade as popular newspaper websites and some of them even publish fake interviews. using deepfake pictures and videos.”
He added, “I categorically deny any endorsement, relation or association with these applications or websites. I caution the public to not fall prey to the content of these malicious sites and to the products or services they are trying to sell to you. Please report any such instances to the concerned regulatory authorities.”