'Ukraine surrenders, Russia wins': Welcome to the world of deepfakes

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's deepfake appeared first on a Ukrainian news portal Segodnya, which was later reported by a local news channel's ticker.

Imagine watching a video published on a Ukrainian news portal where Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seen asking his soldiers to lay down their weapons in the middle of the war. The impact of this appeal on the ongoing Ukrainian resistance could be enormous.

Now, follow that up with another video of Russian President Vladimir Putin gladly declaring victory over Ukraine.

Welcome to the dark world of deepfakes where forged multimedia is being used to win an actual war. While the deepfake video of Zelenskyy was seen first on Wednesday, Putin's fictitious video has also been seen before.

However, this deepfake was seen funneled on social media platforms in tandem with Zelenskyy's fabricated video on Wednesday.

The officials at social media company Meta, which runs platforms like Facebook and Instagram, said that the platform had identified and removed such deepfake videos on Thursday.

"Earlier today, our teams identified and removed a deepfake video claiming to show President Zelenskyy issuing a statement he never did. It appeared on a reportedly compromised website and then started showing across the internet. We've quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy against misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at other platforms," Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta, wrote in a post.