Narayana Murthy calls out deepfake videos of him: 'malicious sites, please report'

The deepfakes Narayana Murthy have been deleted from Facebook.

Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy on Thursday flagged the deepfake videos of him doing the rounds on the internet, cautioning people not to fall for them as well as urging them to report such instances to the authorities.

“In recent months, there have been several fake news items propagated via social media apps and on various webpages available on internet claiming that I have endorsed or invested in automated trading applications named BTC AI Evex, British Bitcoin Profit, Bit Lyte Sync, Immediate Momentum, Capitalix Ventures, etc,” Murthy wrote in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter).

“The news items appear on fraudulent websites that masquerade as popular newspaper websites and some of them even publish fake interviews using deepfake pictures and videos. I categorically deny any endorsement, relation or association with these applications or websites.”

(Continued from above) …named BTC AI Evex, British Bitcoin Profit, Bit Lyte Sync, Immediate Momentum, Capitalix Ventures etc.The news items appear on fraudulent websites that masquerade as popular newspaper websites and some of them even publish fake interviews..(continued)

— Narayana Murthy (@Infosys_nmurthy) December 14, 2023

Murthy’s clarification comes after two deepfake videos of him purportedly promoting a so-called investing platform “Quantum AI” were shared on social media amid the rising issue of deepfake technology.

One of the now-deleted videos on Facebook had a morphed version of the software leader purportedly saying he and billionaire Elon Musk are working on a project called “Quantum AI”.

(Continued from above).. using deepfake pictures and videos. I categorically deny any endorsement, relation or association with these applications or websites. I caution the public to not fall prey to the content of these malicious sites and to the products or…(continued)

— Narayana Murthy (@Infosys_nmurthy) December 14, 2023

“Today I want to present our new project together with Elon Musk. Quantum AI is the world’s first quantum computing software developed by my team and Elon’s team with a 94 per cent success rate,” the morphed voice says. The altered clip urges people to join “Quantum AI”, claiming they can earn up to “$3,000 on their first working day”.

The first giveaway that the clip is fake is that Murthy’s lip movements in the video are out of sync with the audio.

The original footage is of Murthy speaking at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave held on July 7 in Bengaluru. He was interviewed by his son Rohan Murty. During the candid conversation on a range of topics, nowhere did Murthy mention anything on artificial intelligence.

A second deepfake video, posted on Facebook on November 8, has a morphed voice of Narayana Murthy speaking about “Quantum AI”.

Again, the obvious giveaway is Murthy’s English accent is not the same as the one in the deepfake video.

The video is a morphed version of Murthy speaking at Business Today's "Mindrush" event on June 24, 2022. The media outlet has posted the original clip, which is over 45 minutes, on its YouTube channel.

Murthy’s clarification comes a week after industrialist Ratan Tata issued a "fake" alert for misusing his name on social media to "exaggerate investment" with a risk-free and 100 per cent guarantee. In a post on Instagram, Tata called out a post from a user by the name of Sona Agrawal who used a fake interview of him in a video recommending investments.