Barrister Rumeen Farhana Falls Victim to Another Deepfake Video
A video is being shared across multiple Facebook pages and profiles, claiming that BNP’s International Affairs Secretary and former Member of The Parliament, Barrister Rumeen Farhana, appears in the video. The caption reads, “Rumeen Farhana on Purbachal Expressway making a TikTok video.” Upon verification, Dismislab found that the video does not feature Rumeen Farhana. It is a Deepfake video, created by editing another singer’s video using artificial intelligence.
Recently, the video claiming to feature Rumeen Farhana has been shared from multiple Facebook profiles (1, 2, 3) and pages (1, 2, 3). On May, a Facebook page called Bangla News Point directly claimed that Rumeen Farhana was making a TikTok video standing on the Purbachal Expressway. The video features a Bengali song titled “Preme Pore Jai” as background music and has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. The original video can be found on the Facebook page of a music artist named Pronome, who shared the reel on her official Facebook page on May 1 to promote the music video of her song “Preme Pore Jai”. In the video, Rumeen Farhana’s face has been replaced by Pronome’s using artificial intelligence. These types of videos are known as “Deepfake Videos”, and they are often done so subtly that they are sometimes difficult to detect.
Verification shows that, as of the time of writing this report, Pronomi Nafi’s promotional Facebook reel had 17,500 engagements or reactions. In contrast, more than 33 thousand users reacted to the Deepfake video of Rumeen Farhana, which is almost double then the amount of the original reel’s engagement.
Deepfake or distorted videos of Rumeen Farhana have been circulated on multiple occasions before. About which several fact-check reports (1, 2, 3, 4) from various information verification organizations were published.
A deepfake video of Barrister Rumeen Farhana was found on the Bangla News Point Facebook page on April 29. This video was created using AI, editing a dance video of The Indian actress Madhuri Dixit.
Earlier, another video was circulated on the same page (Bangla News Point) distorting a statement of Barrister Rumeen Farhana. Various information verification organizations published fact-check reports on this fake video. Additionally, on May 18, 2023, another Deepfake video of Barrister Rumeen Farhana was shared from this same page on social media, claiming “Year 2013, When she was a student”. Various information verification organizations published fact-check reports on this fake reel as well. A keyword search in the Bangla News Point Facebook page revealed five posts containing misinformation about Barrister Rumeen Farhana. These posts included three Deepfake videos(1, 2, 3), one fabricated reel, and one rumor. Facebook has flagged three posts(1, 2, 3), including two deepfakes and the rumor, but has yet to address the deepfake video of Farhana created using Madhuri Dixit‘s dance video.
