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| - A video showing former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina talking about aynaghors, the colloquial term for Bangladesh's detention centers for political prisoners during her regime, has gone viral on social media.
The claim: Users are sharing the clip to claim that it shows Hasina addressing them during an interview, talking about how they were constructed and how people from the opposition were locked and tortured in them.
At the time of writing this report, this post by Facebook page 'All News' was shared by over 1.3 lakh users and gathered around 86 lakh views.
(Archived versions of more posts sharing this video can be seen here and here.)
But...?: The video is a deepfake.
The original clip, which shows Hasina being interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
How did we find out the truth?: At the end of the video, we noticed a disclaimer mentioning that the video was "AI-generated and created solely for educational and entertainment purposes."
A reverse image search on a screenshot of the viral video using Google Images led us to a 2019 report by the BBC Bangla, showing journalist Manasi Barua interviewing Hasina in London.
It carried a video of the interview, which was published on 6 August 2019.
In the video, Hasina began by talking about how her government was fighting dengue across cities in Bangladesh, and addressing "fake narratives" about purported beheadings carried out as offering for the country's Padma Setu, a bridge across the Padma river.
Hasina then went on to talk about military force and how they quelled protests, saying that the government "does not endorse violence."
Talking about Bangladesh's economy, she said that the government was trying to alleviate economic problems and the issue of people failing to repay their loans to banks.
Towards the end of the interview, the journalist, Barua, asked Hasina about Bangladesh being a 'partial democracy', which the latter dismisses, saying that when she came to power, she opened up the democracy which led to several non-nationalised media organisations coming up.
Hasina concluded by talking about endorsing free and fair elections and did not talk about the detention centers anywhere in this interview.
The source: To look for the source of the viral video, we used terms from the claim to run a keyword search on YouTube.
We found that it was first shared by a channel named 'RTNews24 BD' and was tagged with the text 'Altered or synthetic content' on the top right corner.
Its description elaborated that the video's "sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated."
Which parts are AI?: To check which elements of the clip were altered or created using AI, we ran the video through Bengaluru-based start up Contrails.ai's deepfake investigator tool.
Their report showed high confidence that both elements — audio and video — had been manipulated.
Their analyst's note mentioned that there were "clear manipulation artifacts near the lips" which appeared to "shake unnaturally" event when Hasina was not speaking in the clip.
Conclusion: A deepfake of Sheikh Hasina talking about detention camps in Bangladesh is going viral on social media as an authentic clip of a statement by the former Bangladeshi prime minister.
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