By Euronews
Published on
Social media users are sharing a video that seemingly shows European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy and other Western leaders admitting to damning allegations that dogged their time in power.
The video also features former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former US Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
It is often shared with identical captions asking: “Do you ever wish Western leaders would be a bit more honest?” — a sweeping statement which points towards a disinformation sign.
“Did I help bomb Libya and kill Gaddafi to bury proof that he bankrolled my presidential campaign?” the image of Sarkozy says in the video.
“Did I promote COVID jabs because I set up a €35 billion cash injection through a secret deal with Pfizer?” von der Leyen’s likeness says next.
Although the voices sound fairly accurate, in reality, the video has been AI-generated, which we can tell by the leaders’ uncanny features and their stilted speech.
It was produced by Russian state-controlled news network Russia Today, as shown by the outlet’s logo in the top right corner of the video and the outro, which celebrates its 20th anniversary.
RT does provide a disclaimer towards the end of the video explaining that it is “AI-generated parody content”.
Nonetheless, RT was banned in the EU, the UK and other countries after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, in an effort to combat disinformation.
The topics that the AI-generated leaders discuss in the video are controversial issues from their time in office.
For example, the image of Sarkozy questions the unsubstantiated claim that he helped to bomb Libya and kill Muammar Gaddafi to bury proof that he funded his election campaign.
The former French president was imprisoned last week for criminal conspiracy linked to a scheme to obtain Libyan financing during his 2007 campaign. He is appealing against his conviction.
AI-von der Leyen talks about the so-called Pfizergate case, in which the Commission president allegedly personally entered into a deal with Pfizer to promote the company’s vaccines during the COVID pandemic, bypassing formal procurement processes. She denies any wrongdoing.
The likeness of Boris Johnson, meanwhile, suggests that he sabotaged a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine when they had an agreement “on the table”.
A common false narrative pushed by the Kremlin suggests that the EU and European countries in general are opposed to peace in Ukraine and wish to prolong the war. In fact, European leaders have consistently supported peace efforts and state that they seek a lasting peace that respects Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territory.
In February, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy firmly rejected claims that Johnson scuppered a possible peace agreement in the spring of 2022, as Russian sources, including President Vladimir Putin himself, have claimed.
“There were several approaches with ultimatums [from Russia to end the war] and I never gave my approval for it,” Zelenskyy reportedly said in an interview with The Guardian in February. “It doesn’t fit with logic; what was he [Johnson] supposed to be talking us out of?”
Johnson has also dismissed the allegations as Russian propaganda.
The RT video comes as the quality and complexity of AI-generated videos gather pace.
In October, the Sora 2 technology — created by OpenAI, the same company that founded Chat GPT — was launched in Canada and the US, but is not officially available in Europe.
Although The Cube was not able to identify which technology was used to create these videos, following Sora’s launch, an influx of high-quality AI videos featuring celebrities has emerged on social media.
