News anchor’s video with entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani promoting a trading app is a deepfake

By: Annet Preethi Furtado
June 1 2024

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Screenshots of the post sharing a deep fake video showing Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and news anchor Anjana Om Kashyap promoting a trading app. (Source: Instagram/Modified by Logically Facts)

What's the claim?

A video featuring  Indian news channel Aaj Tak anchor Anjana Om Kashyap and  Nandan Mohanrao Nilekani, co-founder of software company Infosys, is being shared to falsely claim that they have endorsed a quantum computing stock trading app for 'risk-free profit.'

In the nearly two-minute-long video, Kashyap announces that Nilekani has introduced a new project in which he has invested over $3 billion, purportedly offering significant wealth opportunities for Indians. She appears to claim that the trading app allows effortless trading and promises to increase wealth tenfold, and mentions a 'personal interview' with Nilekani.

Starting at the 38-second mark, Nilekani introduces himself and claims to be collaborating with Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk to develop quantum computing software for profit-making in stock trading with minimal risk. He allegedly states that the app has a 94 percent success rate and aims to alleviate global poverty, with a team from tech giants like Apple, Facebook, and Google contributing to its development. Nilekani describes the project as innovative and urges users to try it for free via a provided link.

While Nilekani is speaking, images depicting the human nervous system, brain anatomy, animations, finance investments, digital clocks, the Earth, and programmers appear at different intervals within the clip.

An Instagram user shared the video with the caption, "Nandan Nilekani shared his knowledge and revealed the main secret!" The post has garnered over 2,200 likes. The archived version can be found here.

Screenshot of the viral Instagram post. (Source: Instagram/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, these clips have been digitally manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI). The original video shows that Nilekani did not endorse any such trading platform.

Clip featuring Anjana Om Kashyap

While we were unable to locate the original source of this video, we observed that Kashyap's lip movements do not synchronize at all times with the accompanying audio and seem unnatural at times.

We also noted that while the audio sounded deceptively like Kashyap's voice, the accent in which she speaks did not sound like her own.

We were also unable to find any reports or press releases about any conversation or interview between Kashyap and Nilekani.

Nandan Nilekani's clip

Upon conducting a reverse image search, we found the original video posted on Nilekani's official YouTube channel (archived here) on February 5, 2014, titled "Nandan Nilekani: Joining the Congress Party." In the original 33-second clip, Nilekani, dressed in the same clothes and sitting against the same background as the viral clip, discussed why he was joining the Congress party, emphasizing the importance of bringing good people into politics.

Nilekani had expressed confidence in his ability to contribute significantly within a national party like the Congress and underscored the importance of individuals with commendable backgrounds engaging in politics. Nilekani did not endorse or promote any app in this original video, as falsely depicted in the viral clip. 

In the viral video, Nilekani's lip movements also do not synchronize with the audio at all times. Further, the voice and the accent in which he speaks do not match with his real voice.

There are also no credible news reports about the Infosys co-founder launching a trading app. This evidence suggests the video has been digitally manipulated.

Moreover, the original video does not include segments with images of the human nervous system, brain anatomy animations, finance investments, digital clocks, the Earth, and programmers appearing within the clip at different intervals. We found that these stock images had been taken from stock image websites like Getty Images, iStock, and Shutterstock.

This isn't the first time false claims about Nilekani investing millions in a "get-rich-quick" trading platform have circulated. Previously, Logically Facts fact-checked a fabricated screenshot falsely asserting Nilekani's investment in a crypto trading platform. Nilekani had then addressed similar misinformation on X (formerly Twitter) (archived here), stating, "You may have encountered a post on various social media platforms claiming that I have launched a crypto project. This is #fakenews! Please avoid clicking on it and report it as misleading/false information on the platform where you see it."

It appears the original 2014 video was manipulated using artificial intelligence to make it seem like Nilekani was promoting the stock trading platform. 

Was the viral clip created using AI?

We ran the two-minute clip video through TrueMedia's deepfake detector. The tool found substantial evidence of manipulation in the video, detecting the presence of AI-generated audio with 100 percent confidence and potential AI manipulation of faces with 64 percent confidence, categorizing the clip as highly suspicious.

We also analyzed the entire clip using 'Itisaar,' a deepfake detection tool developed by IIT Jodhpur, and verified by Mayank Vatsa, a professor at the institute's Department of Computer Science & Engineering. The results marked the viral video as fake, with a maximum confidence score of 1. (The score varies between 0 and 1 and includes all decimal numbers in between.)

The verdict

The viral footage of Nandan Nilekani and Anjana Om Kashyap has been digitally altered using artificial intelligence, intelligence to create a false impression of the speakers endorsing a stock trading app. Therefore, we have marked this video as fake.