A video featuring Sudha Murty, renowned author and Member of Parliament, seemingly endorsing an investment app has been manipulated using artificial intelligence to clone her voice. The Earth Science Network (ESN) investigation revealed that the footage was taken from a speech Murty delivered in July 2023 at a conclave. In her original speech, Murty, who also serves as chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, discussed her life as the wife of an entrepreneur. However, the viral video overlays her remarks with AI-generated audio, falsely portraying her promoting the investment app.
Claim
Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, her husband, is visible beside her in the video. In the altered clip, Murty is heard claiming, "Our secret is an autonomous computing mechanism that works on any device with an internet connection. To join our program, you just need to open an account with 21,000 rupees." This manipulated three-minute video was shared by a Facebook page.
Investigation
ESN's analysis confirmed that the viral video had been doctored with a cloned AI voice. The visuals were sourced from Murty's appearance at Moneycontrol's startup conclave in July 2023. Using reverse image search on key frames of the viral video, we traced the original video to Moneycontrol's official YouTube channel, uploaded on July 7, 2023.
In her actual speech, Murty spoke about balancing various roles, including being married to an entrepreneur, with no mention of any investment app. ESN reviewed the entire speech and confirmed that the audio in the viral clip did not match Murty’s lip movements. To verify this further, we analyzed the clip using Loccus AI, a tool for detecting synthetic audio. The results confirmed that the voice had been artificially generated.
Conclusion
The video clip originates from Sudha Murty's speech at Moneycontrol's Startup Conclave in July 2023, where she was discussing the lives of entrepreneurs' wives. However, the audio has been manipulated and replaced with a fake, AI-generated voice, falsely suggesting that she is endorsing a money-making app.
