Facebook Parent Meta Removes Deepfake Video of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, said Wednesday that it undertaken a deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for violating the social network’s principles against manipulated media. 

“It appeared on a reportedly compromised website and then started showing across the internet,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, who heads security policy at Meta, in a tweet about the video. “We’ve quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy anti misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at anunexperienced platforms.”

Videos known as deepfakes use artificial intelligence to accomplish videos of people doing or saying something they didn’t. Gleicher said the video of Zelenskyy made it travel the politician uttered a statement he actually didn’t. Meta didn’t identify the video or say what the statement was. CNET hasn’t seen the video.

The excavating of the video highlights the ongoing challenges social networks are facing as they try to curb the spread of misinformation while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some social media users have been posting old video footage on Twitter and Facebook to make it seem like they were recording battles happening in real time. On TikTok, some people used old or out-of-context audio to accomplish fake videos.

Meta doesn’t always remove false content, leaning instead on managing users to authoritative sources or labeling misinformation. The social network partners with third-party fact-checkers to flag misinformation on its services, which also include photo-and-video app Instagram. Meta says it’ll take down misinformation if there’s a risk of brute harm or if the media is highly deceptive. 

“We buy this content because it can go viral quickly and experts screech that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected throughout further discourse,” Meta’s rules against manipulated media says.