AI-generated videos show dead celebrities criticizing Jair Bolsonaro
Manipulated content featuring images of deceased artists and politics are used to spread disinformation against Brazil's ex-president
Videos in which deceased Brazilian singers and politicians such as Tim Maia, Erasmo Carlos and Gonzaguinha criticize Jair Bolsonaro (PL) were generated by artificial intelligence. The contents, which circulated on TikTok, utilized a technique known as deepfake to manipulate old interviews of these celebrities, inserting statements regarding the former president.
“I might not be alive anymore, but the ignorance of the people is going to elect this guy [Jair Bolsonaro] as president, even though he is known only in Rio,” says Tim Maia in one of the manipulated videos.
There are no official records of similar statements made by the artists and politicians, all of whom are deceased. Furthermore, the videos exhibit signs of synthetic content—such as a lack of synchronization between the artists’ mouth movements and their speech—and have been debunked by AFP Checamos.
The alteration of old recordings of deceased celebrities using artificial intelligence to insert them into political discourse is a disinformation trend on Brazilian social media, according to monitoring by Agência Lupa.
