Claim
A video circulating online claims that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has supported AI-powered investment platforms that guarantee returns to investors.
Also read: Viral photo of Smriti Mandhana and Virat Kohli after winning WPL 2026 was generated by AI
fact
No reliable reports: A keyword search for “Nirmala Sitharaman AI Investment Platform” did not turn up any credible reports or official statements to support the claim.
Original video traced: Reverse image search for viral clips found Hindustan Times YouTube video (December 6, 2025). It shows Sitharaman, who attended the 2025 HT Leadership Summit, wearing the same attire and speaking in the same environment. We skimmed the speech and couldn’t find her making any such comments.
Signs of visual manipulation: A detailed analysis of the viral clip reveals unnatural lip movements and slight inconsistencies between her facial expressions and audio, indicating possible manipulation.
Detection results by AI:
- Hive moderation analysis found that videos contain AI-generated/deepfake content 99.9% of the time.
- Similar to AI flagging audio as fake.
- Another audio deepfake detection tool, Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector, also showed that the audio was likely generated by AI.
Suspicious website linked: The link shared with the viral post redirects users to a site called nirmalainvest5.com. Scam Detector’s checks have rated this site as risky and dangerous, with a very low trust score of 12.6, indicating a high likelihood of being a scam.
Similar scams: News Checker has previously debunked several videos of celebrities manipulated by AI to falsely appear to support questionable investment schemes.
Thus, the viral video of Nirmala Sitharaman allegedly promoting questionable investment schemes turned out to be manipulated by AI.
source of information
YouTube video by Hindustan Times, December 6, 2025
Hive Moderation Website
Similar to AI Website
Hiya Deepfake Audio Detector
