Over two months after a deepfake video of actor Rashmika Mandanna was widely circulated on social media, Delhi Police on Saturday said it has arrested a man in connection the case, reported PTI.
The accused, who is suspected to be the creator of the video, was arrested from south India. He has been brought to Delhi.
The purported video showed the actress entering an elevator. The original video features a British Indian girl, Zara Patel, and her face was morphed to insert Mandana’s face, thereby making it a “deepfake” video.
With improvements in technology related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), deepfakes are the most common on the internet.
Police said that probe is underway.
The Delhi Police’s Special Cell had taken up the case on November 10, and FIR was registered under Indian Penal Code sections 465 (punishment for forgery) and 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation) and sections 66C and 66E of the Information Technology Act at the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) Unit of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell.
The IFSO Unit had then written to Meta to get the URL and other details to identify the accused who made the video and put it on the social media.
Responding to the video, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Union Minister for Electronics & Technology, said on the social media platform X that deep fakes are the latest and a “more dangerous and damaging form of misinformation” that need to be dealt with by social media platforms.
He also cited the legal obligations of social media platforms and IT rules pertaining to digital deception.
Recently, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar became a victim of deepfake, where a digitally manipulated clip and voice of Tendulkar, was shared on Facebook in which it was falsely shown that he was promoting a gaming app.
It also created an impression that he and his daughter Sara Tendulkr had won large sum of money by playing the online game.
