The Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) analysed a short video that apparently features Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt in a photoshoot montage. The Instagram handle, which posted the video included in its bio that the account belonged to a video editor who posts videos for entertainment purposes only. After putting the video through A.I. detection tools we were able to confirm that Ms. Bhatt’s face as seen in the video was a creation of generative A.I.
The 11-second video clip with a popular Hindi song playing in the background was sent to the DAU tipline for assessment. In the comments on the Instagram post featuring the video, someone had mentioned that the original video featured another Bollywood actress, Wamiqa Gabbi, and that Bhatt’s face had been swapped with her face.
Taking that comment as a cue, we undertook a reverse image search using keyframes from the video and traced the original video to the Instagram account of Ms. Gabbi. That video was published on April 27, 2024 and everything in it was identical to the video that we were analysing except for Bhatt’s face, which did not feature anywhere.
We also checked Bhatt’s official Instagram account as well as her other official social media handles but the video apparently featuring her could not be traced anywhere. The handle that had posted this video spotlighting Bhatt had also posted other video content featuring what appears to be the actress's A.I.-generated face. The bio on that handle does not mention the use of A.I. tools in editing, hence we wanted to assess if there were elements of A.I. in the video that we were examining.
We put the video through HIVE AI’s deepfake detection tool and that indicated A.I. manipulation in the video.
We also used TrueMedia’s deepfake detector, which overall concluded that there was a very high probability of A.I. manipulation in the video, and gave a 100 percent confidence score to deepfake face detection as it further broke down its analysis.
On the basis of our findings and the disclaimer from the creator of the video under examination, we can conclude that Bhatt’s face in the video is not real and that it has been superimposed by using A.I. tools.
(Written by Areeba Falak with inputs from Debraj Sarkar, edited by Pamposh Raina.)
Kindly Note: The manipulated audio/video files that we receive on our tipline are not embedded in our assessment reports because we do not intend to contribute to their virality.
You can read below the fact-checks related to this piece published by our partners:
Fact Check: Another Alia Bhatt deepfake! Face of actor added over Wamiqa Gabbi's
