Video claiming 75% people want Awami League to take power is false
A video has spread on Facebook claiming that 75% of people in Bangladesh want the Awami League party to return to power, citing a survey by Voice of America. But fact-check shows that the survey actually said 57% supported allowing the Awami League to continue politics.
The circulated video is captioned , “Voice of America’s survey shows 75 percent of people in Bangladesh want the Awami League to return.” In the video, a news presenter is heard saying, “Voice of America’s survey shows that … (unclear) percent of people in Bangladesh want the Awami League to return and take power.” The video carries a “14 News” logo. It has been viewed more than 300,000 times and shared over 1,000 times.
A keyword search found the latest relevant Voice of America (VOA) survey, published on its website on Nov. 27, 2024. The survey was conducted by VOA Bangla. It asked respondents whether the Awami League should be banned or allowed to continue political activities. According to the published results, 57% of respondents support allowing the Awami League to continue in politics. Meanwhile, 35.5% support banning the party.
No Bangla news outlet exists with the name or logo “14 News” seen in the video. The breaking news text shown in the video reads, “Obidiror bozir al si bayusidiy hayan, nao, u% kbar, dak bali saur souk nor alar [sic],” which has no meaning. Such distorted text is a common feature of AI-generated videos.
A watermark reading “Veo” appears on the right side of the video. Veo is a text-to-video AI model created by Google DeepMind. AI videos made with Veo are usually eight seconds long, and the verified video matches the length. A verification using the content detection tool Deepfake-O-Meter shows a strong likelihood that the video was created with AI, with a 100% probability.
The original survey was conducted by the research firm ORG-Quest Research Limited in accordance with Voice of America Bangla’s editorial guidelines. The survey used closed-ended questions. Computer-assisted telephone interviews were conducted with 1,000 people aged 18 and above across eight divisions of the country. The reported margin of error was 3.1%.
In short, the video claiming that 75% of people want the Awami League to return to power based on a Voice of America survey is AI-generated. The claim also does not match the actual survey results.Videos created using Google’s Veo AI and other AI tools are often seen spreading false claims on social media. Dismislab has previously published several fact-check reports (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) on similar AI-generated videos.
