Actor Rashmika Mandanna made headlines after her morphed video went viral online. In the unverified video, the woman with Rashmika’s face was seen getting into a lift, wearing a fitted outfit. After the video went viral, a few social media users came forward to clarify that the video was deepfaked.
Now, Rashmika has reacted to it. Taking to her Instagram Stories, the actor wrote, ‘I feel really hurt to share this and have to talk about the deepfake video of me being spread online. Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me, but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused.’
She added, ‘Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends and well wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this. We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft.’
Earlier, Amitabh Bachchan, who has worked with Rashmika in ‘Goodbye’, retweeted a post and urged for legal action to be taken against such theft. ‘Yes this is a strong case for legal,’ he wrote.
A journalist had confirmed that the video was fake. ‘There is an urgent need for a legal and regulatory framework to deal with deepfake in India. You might have seen this viral video of actress Rashmika Mandanna on Instagram. But wait, this is a deepfake video of Zara Patel,’ he wrote on X.
‘From a deepfake POV, the viral video is perfect enough for ordinary social media users to fall for it. But if you watch the video carefully, you can see at (0:01) that when Rashmika (deepfake) was entering the lift, suddenly her face changes from the other girl to Rashmika,’ he added.
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