TRUE OR FALSE. Did Anne-Claire Coudray, Julian Bugier or Gilles Bouleau really extol the merits of an application in the middle of the television news?

These videos are multiplying on social networks: we see famous television news presenters promoting applications for gambling or online investments. These are actually “deepfakes”, videos hijacked using artificial intelligence.

You may have come across one of these videos while scrolling on social media. We see Julian Bugier, Gilles Bouleau and Anne-Claire Coudray promoting an application, for gambling or for investing online. In one of them, the TF1 news presenter is on set, alongside a famous rapper. She addresses us : “The French singer Maître Gims has launched a new application which allows the French to become very rich, hundreds of French people have already installed this application”. Gims himself speaks. We clearly recognize the decor of the TF1 set and the voices of the journalist and the rapper. Did Anne-Claire Coudray really promote, on the TF1 newspaper, a Gims application? ?

A video hijacked using artificial intelligence

Obviously, this is false. It is actually a deepfake, a video hijacked using artificial intelligence. Old videos, when Gims was invited to the TF1 set last December, were used, but the voice was cloned and the movement of the hands modified. In the rest of the video, we are even shown satisfied pseudo users of the famous application. “We won 1 389 864 euros, and we thanked Maître Gims for giving us the opportunity to change our lives.”, they seem to say. Once again, these are old images, from television reports, modified. A false report fabricated from scratch.

Videos of the same type multiply, with the same recipe : a well-known TV news presenter sells the merits of an application, often with the help of a celebrity. Stromae, Omar Sy, and even the YouTuber Squeezie have already appeared in this type of “false report”. These videos are always sponsored. They refer to online gambling or investment applications or sites, more or less serious, but which are very real. They use a roundabout way of advertising.

The phenomenon is not new. The specialist and teacher in new technologies Victor Baait, who has been interested in it for months, noticed the first videos from 2022, but with very basic artificial intelligence tools. Today, “fake news stories” are more successful and more numerous. “I focus on French-speaking videos, and I have identified hundreds of them in recent months”, he explains on the microphone of franceinfo. However, some of the videos published are deleted, “so there are tens of thousands of them”assesses Victor Baait.

The media takes the subject seriously

How to Spot These Fake TV Reports ? Several details must be observed carefully : the quality of the image or sound, possible blurring of the lips, grammatical errors, bad connections or even choppy delivery.

In any case, the media take the subject very seriously. The TF1 group, contacted by franceinfo, assures action “systematically” when they discover the existence of such diverted videos, using several levers : “Deletion of content, criminal action and representations to the competition authorities in order to show that there is no impunity in this matter.”