Indian actress Rashmika Mandanna has issued a statement after she was the victim of a deepfake video also involving the British-Indian influencer, engineer and model Zara Patel.
In a video, which has since gone viral across social media, a woman with Mandanna's face, wearing workout gear with a low-cut neckline can be seen getting into an elevator, with another person in the lift filming from a POV perspective.
However, 27-year-old Mandanna, best known for her roles in Telugu and Kannada films as well as Tamil and Hindi films, is not the woman in the video at all.
The body of the woman belongs to the aforementioned Patel, who has more than 400,000 followers on Instagram alone. Mandanna meanwhile has more than 39 million followers.
After being made aware of the video Mandanna has issued a statement lambasting the deepfake video, calling it 'extremely scary' and called for urgent action to be taken on how deepfake technology is being used.
Mandanna has also shared a side-by-side video featuring the deepfake and the original clip to show the difference between the two.
Meanwhile, Patel has also said that she had reported the video on Instagram and called for similar action to be taken. On X/Twitter the influencer wrote: "I've reported this deep fake video of me and instagram hasnt taken it down. We seriously need prompt action when it comes to things like this. Do better @instagram."
Deepfakes have become an increased problem since the technology emerged a few years with many users utilising the technology to make explicit clips and images of female stars such as Billie Eilish, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Watson.
The likes of Greta Thunberg and MrBeast have also been victims of deepfakes with the technology being used to fool people into believing that they promoted issues and schemes which they do not condone.
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