A video featuring Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being shared on social media with a claim that Australia has canceled visas for all Pakistani nationals following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack. The clip shows Albanese clearly announcing his decision. He can be seen saying in the video:Pakistani terrorist Naveed Akram has been arrested in today's terrorist attack. Australia will immediately suspend all visa services to Pakistani nationals.Throughout this article, we will fact-check this claim.
Claim: Video of Australian Prime Minister announcing the cancellation of all visas for Pakistan following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
fact: This viral video is an AI-generated deepfake. Audio is generated using artificial intelligence and does not reflect actual statements made by Anthony Albanese. Therefore, the claim in the post is that error.
To test this claim, we conducted an internet search using relevant keywords to see if Anthony Albanese had made such an announcement after the Bondi Beach attack. This search did not yield any reliable reporting to verify that claim. It also turns out that he made no such statements in the press conference after the attack (here and here). However, I found news reports (here, here, and here) that one of the alleged attackers, Naveed Akram, was arrested and taken to the hospital.
Additionally, to learn more about the video, we extracted keyframes from the video and performed a reverse image search. This resulted in a 2022 media report featuring photos that closely match the visuals seen in the viral clips (here, here, and here). One such report is sydney morning herald On August 3, 2022, we covered the parliamentary debate on the Indigenous Voices to Parliament proposal. Photos accompanying the report match the background, clothing and posture seen in the viral video.
Additionally, when we took a closer look at the viral video, we noticed a discrepancy between Albanese's lip movements and the accompanying audio. The audio also sounded unnatural, raising suspicions that the clip was generated using AI tools.
To verify the authenticity of the video, we analyzed the video using Hiya's deepfake audio detector, which showed that the audio track was generated by AI. This proves that this is a deepfake video and not real footage.
Additionally, when we ran this video through Hive, an AI content detection tool, it identified the video as AI-generated or deepfake, with a total score of 68.3%.
In summary, this video of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announcing that Australia has suspended all visa services for Pakistanis is a deepfake.
