In a shocking development, deepfake videos featuring several prominent Indian personalities, including the Ambanis, have gone viral, showing them promoting a sketchy online gaming app, Aviator.
Anant Ambani, who recently got married in an extravagant and star-studded ceremony, was at the heart of the controversy. Other targeted figures included Nita Ambani, billionaire business magnate Gautam Adani, and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
These manipulated videos have been widely circulated in Facebook. In one of them, Anant Ambani is seen promising viewers five times the return on winnings and double the return in losses as a special offer for his wedding celebration. However, users noticed that his lip movements felt unnatural and were not in sync with his speech, raising doubts about the videos being digitally altered.
Similarly, Nita Ambani, founder and chairperson of Reliance Foundation, has been targeted in a deepfake video used to falsely endorse the Aviator app. Her ad derived from an original YouTube interview with CNBC-TV18.
The ads can be found here, here, here and here.
This incident follows a similar case where cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar was depicted in a deepfake video promoting another dubious gaming app, Skyward Aviator Quest. Valor Casino, another online gaming platform, employed deepfake technology to feature cricket icon Virat Kohli and podcaster and content creator Ranveer Allahbadia (aka Beer Biceps). Several other celebrities have also been targeted by deepfakes, including Katrina Kaif, Alia Bhatt and Rashmika Mandanna. The growing list of deepfake victims have raised further concerns regarding the ethical uses of AI for marketing and entertainment.
