Wrote: Festim Rizanaj
The Facebook page named "Universal" published on March 12 a video in which a man is seen speaking in Albanian. This video was distributed with the claim that an Albanian MP in a Swiss canton is calling on Albanians in Kosovo and the diaspora not to support Kosovo's Prime Minister, Albin Kurti.
After verification, it was found that the man in the video is not the Albanian MP in Switzerland and that the video was generated with artificial intelligence.
Video verification
The video features a person who claims to be an Albanian MP in Switzerland and who says: "I am very disappointed with Albin Kurti's governance. The state cannot be managed by blocking it. The people in Kosovo must understand that Kurti does not know how to govern, he wants chaos. We must not allow this to happen to the Albanian people in Kosovo, nor to the Albanians in the diaspora.".
As of the time of writing this article, the video has reached around 105 thousand views, 223 shares, 510 comments and over 1 thousand 100 reactions, which indicates that the content has had a significant degree of virality on social networks.
However, after verifying the video, it turns out that the person appearing in it is not the Albanian MP in Switzerland. The Albanian MP in the canton of Bern is Korab Rashiti, who looks different from the person appearing in the video.
Research shows that the person in the video was created with artificial intelligence and does not exist in reality. The same avatar was found on the platform “narrax.ai”, a platform used to create AI-generated videos. (here)
Furthermore, the video was also analyzed through AI-generated content detection platforms, such as Hive Moderation. The results of this analysis show that there is a 98.5% probability that the video was created with AI, while the audio has a 99.9% probability of being generated with AI technology.
Based on visual and auditory analysis of the video, several elements have been identified that suggest the use of artificial intelligence.
One of the main indicators is lip-sync. The movement of the mouth does not fully match the articulation of words in the Albanian language. At times, the lips move unnaturally or appear unclear compared to the rest of the face.
There is also a lack of natural facial expressions. While the person is speaking, the muscles of the cheeks and forehead do not react organically to the words being spoken. The eyes remain relatively fixed and do not reflect the emotion of disappointment that is intended to be expressed in the statement.
The voice quality also presents typical characteristics of artificial generation technology. The voice has a monotonous and somewhat “robotic” tone, which is common in text-to-speech technologies or voice cloning systems. It also lacks the natural pauses for breathing and emotional variations that usually appear when a real person speaks about such a subject.
Visually, there are also digital artifacts, especially around the chin and lips. At times, there is a slight flickering of pixels (ghosting), a phenomenon that often occurs when an artificial intelligence model tries to superimpose new mouth movement on an existing video.
Based on these findings, the claim that the video depicts an Albanian MP in Switzerland criticizing Albin Kurti's government turns out to be false, as the video was created with artificial intelligence and the person depicted in it does not exist in reality.
Analyze:
It is alleged that an Albanian MP in a Swiss canton is calling on Albanians in Kosovo and the diaspora not to support Prime Minister Albin Kurti, through a video published by the Facebook page "Universal".
However, verification shows that the person in the video is not the Albanian MP in Switzerland and that the video was created with artificial intelligence.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info classifies this content as "fraud" and "fake news".
Reasoning:
The “Deception” rating is given to informational content that is manipulated in terms of visual (deepfake, cheapfake), audio, or textual content to deceive the audience. This form of deception is usually used to produce false and manipulated content.
The “Fake News” rating is given to informational content that is entirely fabricated or that contains factually incorrect claims or information. Content that is rated as fake news can be defined as having been created and distributed with the intent to misinform the public, i.e., to present a claim that is completely false as fact.