Deepfake turns out to be the video that shows… “shock testimony”, according to which the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bought, during the couple’s recent visit to Paris last month, an expensive Bugatti Tourbillon.
The video is part of a disinformation network linked to Russia, according to analysis by the BBC and CNN.
Zelesnky’s wife Olena just spent €4.5 million of her taxpayer’s money on a brand new Bugatti Tourbillon (1 in 250) in France.
An employee at the Bugatti dealership in Paris named Jacques Bertin revealed that the Zelenskys made this purchase while… pic.twitter.com/irrbeRgcAw
– Australian Cossack (@aussiecossack) July 1, 2024
The video was created with the help of artificial intelligence software and showed a (non-existent) employee of the Bugatti dealership in Paris claiming that Olena Zelenska bought the new Bugatti Tourbillon model for 4.5 million euros on June 7.
The clip certainly has many signs of a deeply fake production, from the naive cutting to the strange pronunciation and mouth movements of the announcer.
Over 18 million views
However, it managed to garner around 18 million views in 24 hours on X, where it was reposted by pro-Russian influencers.
Bugatti and its Parisian dealer “vehemently denounced the disinformation campaign and explained:
“A supposed seller of ours who claims to belong to the Car Lovers Group published a video on social media in which he says that the Bugatti dealership in Paris sold a vehicle to the presidential couple of Ukraine (…) The group “categorically denies both the existence of the transaction and, consequently, the existence of the invoice”.