A video showing Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in a live show that would be recorded in a clothing store is being shared on social networks, mainly on Twitter. The unusualness of the video, which suggests that the President of the Republic visited the store at a time when two shopkeepers were doing a live on social networks, raises doubts on social networks about the veracity of the images.
In the video, which was also shared on the Facebook page of the clothing store in question, the title “Ah pois é que privilege” is used. With little more than a minute, this video presents a merchant, who is identified in the video as Patrícia Ribeiro, during a live showing the products of the store, when she was surprised when Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa entered the establishment.
In this recording it is possible to hear the voice of the President of the Republic even before it appears on the screen. “Today we have no right to the police,” says the merchant, without giving more context to this reference. Then he adds: “But we have the right to Dr. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.”
Shortly after, the President of the Republic appears in the image. “I passed by and found this store”, Marcelo is heard saying, while he is flanked by the two women. It is still possible to hear the President praising the products for sale in the store.
The fact is that, because some of the videos shared on social networks have a kind of “jumps” in the images, which appear precisely when the President of the Republic appears on the screen, some users pointed out that the content could be false. . “There is a bug [uma falha] at 15 seconds. but otherwise not [não] it’s bad,” a user responds on Twitter, suggesting that the images may not be true. “If this is deepfake it’s great,” says another Twitter user.
Fonte de Belém confirms to the Observer the veracity of the images. “The moment happened on a night walk, after a concert at the Casa da Música. The President of the Republic, as usual, always walks to the hotel and takes the opportunity to greet people and entered a clothing store on a street parallel to Avenida da Boavista”, in Porto.
The fleeting meeting was thus for posterity. The images are true, but it is not unreasonable that some users of social networks suspect their veracity. The phenomenon of “deepfakes”, a technology that uses machine learning to be able to assume the identity of another person, imitating the physiognomy, expressions and even the voice, is today a cause for concern.
With the advancement of technological progress, “deep fakes” (usually shared in video format) are becoming more and more convincing. A few years ago, a “deepfake” of Barack Obama, the former president of the United States, made headlines. Earlier this year, a fake video of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian head of state, also appeared in the news, where the surrender of Ukraine was supposed to be announced. In both cases, the videos turned out to be false, with the content doctored or digitally constructed to obtain certain messages that the alleged protagonists had not defended.
conclusion
Suspicions about the veracity of a video in which the President of the Republic is the protagonist, during a live broadcast on social networks, from a clothing store, are not confirmed. Fonte de Belém assumes, in statements to the Observer, that the episode occurred during Marcelo’s visit to Porto. Other versions of the video show that there is no fault in the transmission, a fact that raised doubts about the possibility that a product of fake deep.
According to the Observer classification, this content is:
WRONG
Source: Observadora
