Instagram has a Bollywood deepfake problem

Deepfakes of Deepika Padukone and her baby are being shared across Instagram.

A heart-warming photo on Instagram shows Indian actor Deepika Padukone with her infant daughter, smiling lovingly at the baby. Other such photos show father Ranveer Singh cuddling the baby or happily embracing Padukone.

While these photos have garnered hundreds or even thousands of likes for various accounts, they are completely absent from both Padukone and Singh’s official Instagram handles, because the photos are deepfakes.

The two Bollywood actors who recently became parents have so far been cautious about protecting their newborn daughter’s privacy and are yet to publicly post family photos revealing the baby’s face.

It is not clear if these deepfakes of Padukone and her baby were created with AI text-to-image generators or other photo manipulation tools. But due to their hyper-realistic nature, they have fooled many users on Instagram. The deepfakes are also completely unmarked, even though Instagram urges users to self-identify AI-generated content on its platform.

“Labelling your AI-generated or AI-modified content on Instagram helps establish transparency and trust. In some cases, it’s required,” stated Instagram in its Help Centre.

“Content may be labelled automatically when it contains AI signals, or you can label AI-generated or AI-modified content when you share it on Instagram,” the company further noted, but the manipulated images of Padukone, Singh, their baby, and other actors have already gone viral without being labelled as synthetic or misleading.

In another instance, an Instagram photo showed actor Rashmika Mandanna with fellow actor Vijay Deverakonda, both dressed in finery and posing as though they were a couple. Some warped fingers and details on their hands suggested that the image was generated with AI.