Facebook says it removed deepfake video claiming to be Zelenskyy

The head of security policy at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said a deepfake video claiming to be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pulled from the social media website.

Nathaniel Gleicher said the video shows the deepfake making a statement that Zelenskyy never did.

“We’ve quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy against misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at other platforms,” Gleicher said.

The MIT Sloan School of Management describes a deepfake as a “specific kind of synthetic media where a person in an image or video is swapped with another person’s likeness.”

Meta did not say what the deepfake video referenced. However, a deepfake video of a fake Zelenskyy telling Ukrainians to surrender was being shared online.

According to Vice, Zelenskyy has since posted a real video of himself saying Ukraine will not surrender to Russia.