Description: A video widely shared on TikTok and Facebook falsely presents Kenyan President William Ruto speaking in French during a speech in Tokyo on February 7, 2024. A reverse image search confirmed the original footage shows Ruto speaking in English to the Kenyan diaspora. The manipulated version used AI-generated French audio over the original video, making it a case of voice cloning rather than a full audiovisual deepfake.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developer and Unknown voice cloning technology developer developed an AI system deployed by Unknown actors and Unknown actors manipulating footage of William Ruto, which harmed William Ruto and General public of Kenya.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake app , Unknown voice cloning technology , Facebook , Instagram and Social media
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1023
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-02-19
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline

IN SHORT: A video of Kenyan president William Ruto speaking in French is circulating on social media in Kenya. However, the audio has been edited using artificial intelligence tools.
A short video, originally from TikTok and shared on Faceb…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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