Actor Rashmika Mandanna took to social media on Monday to express concern over a “deepfake video” of her that went viral over the last weekend. In a post on X, the actor said, “Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused.”
Rashmika Mandanna‘s reaction came a day after a video showing a woman, with Rashmika’s face, went viral on social media. The woman in the unconfirmed video was seen entering a lift wearing a black swimsuit.
In her first reaction to the viral video, Rashmika said the community needs to address this issue of the misue of technology with an “urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft”.
“I feel really hurt to share this and have to talk about the deepfake video of me being spread online,” Rashmika Mandanna said, adding how she could not have tackled the situation had this happened in her school days.
“Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends and well wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this,” she said.
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Earlier in the day, Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan called for legal action over the viral video. “yes this is a strong case for legal,” he said in a tweet on Monday.
Amitabh Bachchan also re-shared a post that explained how to distinguish between the fake and original video. The Twitter user had posted the original video, and said, “The original video is of Zara Patel, a British-Indian girl with 415K followers on Instagram. She uploaded this video on Instagram on 9 October.”
He also pointed to the moment in the video where the face changes from that of the “other girl to Rashmika’s (sic)”.
Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar also reacted, saying these dangerous and damaging form of misinformation needs to be dealt with by platforms. Taking to X, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT wrote, “PM Narendra Modi ji’s Govt is committed to ensuring Safety and Trust of all DigitalNagriks using Internet.”
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