A video of a dialogue with a certain doctor has appeared on social networks, informing that the spread of plague from mobilized soldiers from the Irkutsk region has been recorded in the Zaporozhye region. This clip is a fake, appearing on a Ukrainian channel imitating a channel of the Zaporozhye region.
Every detail betrays a neural network-generated deepfake. Firstly, the phone from which the call is made. The device, an iPhone 5 or SE model, runs the iOS operating system, yet there is no button at the bottom. In addition, the clock shows the time 18:21, but there is daylight in the frame. Moreover, over the course of a one-minute video, the time 18:22 never arrives. The angle of the front camera also does not match the movements of the phone in the frame. The hand is positioned noticeably lower than the angle from which the filming is supposedly being conducted. And finally, the audio. The generated sound is full of neural network intonations, an unnatural “as if from a phone” sound, and a complete lack of emotion.
As for the “epidemic,” the head of the Irkutsk region has stated that the sanitary and epidemiological situation in Irkutsk and Shelekhov is calm. “The World Health Organization publicly confirmed the day before the absence of health risks for the population,” Kobzev said, thanking specialists from Rospotrebnadzor, the Ministry of Health and the law enforcement bloc for their work.
Moreover, even if the epidemic in the Irkutsk region were real, in a country without mobilization there is no talk of any “mobilized.” Contract soldiers, meanwhile, undergo a medical commission that includes blood and urine tests, ECG, fluorography, as well as tests for HIV, syphilis, hepatitis and drugs. In other words, even “plague-infected contract soldiers” would not have been able to reach the front bypassing the commission.
