Sachin Tendulkar Is The Latest To Fall Prey To Deepfakes

Amid the growing menace of deepfakes, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar has become the latest victim to this technology, as a manipulated video featuring him surfaced online.

The video shows Tendulkar endorsing the gaming app Skyward Aviator Quest and falsely claiming that his daughter Sara reaping financial benefits from it.

The ‘master blaster’ recently took to social media to address the disturbing misuse of technology, urging vigilance and swift action against the spread of misinformation.

“These videos are fake. It is disturbing to see rampant misuse of technology. Request everyone to report videos, ads & apps like these in large numbers. Social media platforms need to be alert and responsive to complaints. Swift action from their end is crucial to stopping the spread of misinformation and deepfakes,” Tendulkar wrote on X.

A deepfake is an image, or a video or audio recording, that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else in a way that makes it look authentic. 

This comes days after Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said that the government will “keep an eye” on the remedial measures taken by the platforms on the advisories related to deepfakes.

The minister also promised that inaction on their part may prompt amendment to the IT Rules that will be more “prescriptive”.

Earlier, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) rolled out a new advisory to all social media platforms to comply with existing IT rules and ensure deepfakes and the misinformation enabled by them are curbed.

The advisory stated that IT ministry directed intermediaries need to ‘clearly and precisely’ inform their respective users about what kind of content is prohibited, especially the ones specified under Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules.

In December last year, YouTube India director Ishan John Chatterjee said deepfakes were not in the Google-owned video-sharing platform’s interest at all as viewers, creators and advertisers want to steer clear of platforms that allow fake news or misinformation.

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