A manipulated video made with an AI-generated voice clone of actor Sanjay Dutt is circulating with false claims that he threatened gangster Lawrence Bishnoi over the latter's alleged involvement in the murder of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Baba Siddique and for giving death threats to actor Salman Khan.
BOOM found that the video is overlaid with a voice clone of Dutt. The original footage from 2018 predates the recent murder of Siddique; in the footage the actor can be heard wishing his fans for Diwali.
Following the assassination of Baba Siddique in Mumbai on October 12, 2024, actor Salman Khan was reported to have received threats from the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.
Amidst this, the video is being circulated on social media, where Dutt appears to be saying, "See Lawrence, whatever you have done to Baba Siddique is very wrong. And another thing, Salman Khan is just like my younger brother. If you do anything wrong to him, then this Baba will not spare you. Just remember this."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on keyframes from the video and found that Dutt had posted it on his official Instagram handle on November 7, 2018.
In the original video, Dutt is heard wishing his fan a Happy Diwali.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Additionally, we noticed a mismatch between the audio and Sanjay Dutt's lip movements in the viral video. We tested the video using TrueMedia's AI detection tool. The tool pointed out about "Substantial Evidence of Manipulation" in the video.
The tool's results stated with 98% confidence that the video contains AI-generated audio, suggesting 'substantial evidence' of manipulation in the original footage.
Furthermore, the results showed 70% confidence in detecting "unusual patterns and discrepancies in facial features" after analysing the video frames but found 'little evidence' of AI manipulation in terms of face swaps or reenactment.