Narayana Murthy deepfake videos: AI project with Elon Musk? A fact-check

Two deepfake videos of Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy purportedly promoting a so-called investing platform “Quantum AI” are being shared on social media amid the rising issue of deepfake technology.

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

“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”.

“Today I want to present a new project with a 94 per cent success rate of Quantum AI. This is the world’s first quantum computing software developed by my team,” the audio says.

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.

Last month, Murthy had expressed his views on the impact of AI on the landscape of IT services acknowledging the potential dangers, particularly in scenarios involving malevolent intentions, such as utilising AI for warfare or creating deepfakes.

“Deepfakes is an issue or even in the context of any technology getting into an evil mind, that's always an issue,” he told Moneycontrol in an interview adding that he isn’t too negative about it.

“Conferences happening all over the world on how to contain the not so desirable impact or effects of AI. And I'm sure that there are a lot of brilliant people who are working on it. So I am much more positive than negative about it,” he added.

Recently, actors Alia Bhatt, Rashmika Mandanna, Katrina Kaif and Kajol were targets of deepfakes, with morphed clips of theirs doing the rounds on the internet.