Fact Check: Rashmika Mandanna’s deepfake sparks concerns over AI misuse; netizens demand legal action

A video of actress Rashmika Manadanna is viral on social media with misleading claims.

In the viral video, you can see a woman purportedly entering an elevator in a black outfit and saying 'Hi' to the person filming. Netizens have been asking if this is Rashmika Mandanna.

The post was shared with the caption, "Yeh Rashmika Hai?? Crushmikaaaaa."

Let’s find out.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim to be false as the video is a deepfake.

As soon as the deepfake went viral, the actress addressed and penned her concern over the viral video.

Taking to X, she wrote, “I feel hurt to share this and have to talk about the deepfake video of me being spread online. Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused. Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends, and well-wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this. We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft. ‘

With hashtags, ‘@cyberabadpolice@Cyberdost@MahaCyber1’

The same note was also shared as a story on the Instagram handle of Rashmika as well.

The concern was taken to X by a fact checker from ALT News Abhishek, who wrote, “There is an urgent need for a legal and regulatory framework to deal with deepfake in India. You might have seen this viral video of actress Rashmika Mandanna on Instagram. But wait, this is a deepfake video of Zara Patel. This thread contains the actual video.”

Through a simple keyword search, we found the original version of the video on Zara Patel, a British-Indian influencer's Instagram handle.

As a deepfake, the viral video can easily fool anyone who has no idea about the growing technology. On taking a closer look, one can spot the transformation of the girl’s face into Rashmika’s at 0:01 sec when the girl entered the lift.

Prominent actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Naga Chaitanya, and many others came to support Rashmika Mandanna expressed their disagreement over the situation, and asked for legal action against the creator of the deepfake.

“Yes this is a strong case for legal”, says Amitabh Bachchan in his tweet.

Not only actors and actresses but Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for entrepreneurship, skill development, electronics, and technology also shared a note tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In his tweet, he wrote, "PM @narendramodi ji's Govt is committed to ensuring Safety and Trust of all DigitalNagriks using the Internet".

Under the IT rules notified in April 2023 - it is a legal obligation for platforms to

➡️ensure no misinformation is posted by any user

➡️ensure that when reported by any user or govt, misinformation is removed in 36 hrs

➡️If platforms do not comply with this, rule 7 will apply and platforms can be taken to court by aggrieved persons under provisions of IPC.

➡️Deep fakes are the latest and even more dangerous and damaging form of misinformation and need to be dealt with by platforms’

What is an AI deepfake?

Deepfakes use a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to make images of fake events or create visibly real alterations of characters. This technology can create really convincing photos and manipulate originally existing videos or images into whatever you want to look like. Do you want to see Barack Obama's face on Donald Trump's body? Using this technology, it can be done within fractions of a second. Not only images and videos you can also make audio fixes with the help of voice cloning.

As AI-generated deepfakes have become so common these days. It is concerning, how individual cyber security is threatened by it and how the government is going to establish regulations regarding the same.