A video of billionaire Mukesh Ambani where it appears he is endorsing a stock market forum is fake and has been made using artificial voice cloning technology.
BOOM found that the video is a deepfake of the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. The original video has been taken from Ambani's speech at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2024.
The clip was posted on a Facebook page called Evercore 2. In it, Ambani can be heard saying, "Hello everyone, my name is Mukesh Ambani. I find that many people don't know how to pick stocks and just follow the trend. But investment is not gambling, and it is not advisable to not have a mature investment strategy. So, we created a completely free stock forum community to introduce the most popular stocks and recommended stocks in the latest stock market teach you how to make money by trading in stocks, provide financial security strategies, stock investment skills, stock selection methods and share valuable investment advice. And for market analysis, we have a professional and now assist team to assist you as well as investors who have already made money to share their experiences. Do you really understand the stock market? Come join us now."
The post also contains the link to an external website which appears to be a fraud website using the name Evercore. The website contains a link to join a WhatsApp group.
Click here to view the post.
Fact Check
BOOM found that the video is a deepfake and Ambani did not make any speech promoting a stock market forum.
The viral clip is an AI-generated voice clone of Ambani. It has several tell-tale signs of being a deepfake. For instance, the voice has a strange accent. Secondly, the lip sync in the video is clearly off and it does not match the voice-over.
BOOM has written how Facebook is overrun with fake ads using AI voice cloning and promoting dubious investment schemes and other fraud betting apps.
In the past, BOOM has also debunked similar doctored videos of Ambani endorsing a fake fund manager named Laila Rao.
A sign of Vibrant Gujarat 2024 is visible in the video. We found several news reports about Mukesh Ambani attending the Gujarat government event.
We found that Ambani's speech was live streamed on the official YouTube channel of the Prime Minister's Office of India on January 10, 2024, along with speeches from other participants at the event. Ambani's speech can be heard from the 40:54-minute mark to the 51:17-minute mark in the video.
Furthermore, we observed that the same speech by Mukesh Ambani was posted on the official YouTube channel of the news agency ANI on January 10, 2024, featuring its logo similar to the scenes present in the viral video.
Throughout his speech, Ambani discussed about his company, Reliance Industries, outlining various upcoming plans for the state of Gujarat. He also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech. Ambani expressed optimism in his speech, stating that he believed India will grow into a $35 trillion economy by 2047.
Furthermore, we analysed the voiceover using Loccus.ai - an AI audio detection tool, which determined that the voice seems AI generated and had a less than 1% probability of being real.