- Saturday, July 27, 2024
She thanked her family, friends and the film fraternity for supporting her after her deepfake video incident.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIAN actress Rashmika Mandanna, who recently found herself at the receiving end over a deepfake video, has appealed to people to refrain from sharing such material.
The 27-year-old also asked young women to speak up if somebody tried to harass them with such shares.
Mandanna’s message came weeks after a deepfake video about her went viral on the Internet, triggering reaction from various quarters.
In the video, the celebrity’s face was morphed onto an Instagram video posted by another woman. Mandanna had called the incident “extremely scary” then.
Read: After Modi raises flag, India works on law to tackle deepfakes
The solidarity she received from the film fraternity over the incident made her understand that sharing such videos should not be a normal practice, a BBC report added.
“It [the support] made me feel safe, and secure,” she told the media on Monday (27).
Read: India’s deepfake challenge: Modi raises concern, cites his own ‘Garba deepfake’
“So I want to tell all girls out there that this is not normal. When something is affecting you, you don’t have to keep quiet.”
Soon after the deepfake video went viral, Mandanna wrote in a post on X, “If this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this.”
She also thanked her family and friends and sought the issue to be addressed urgently.
Some of Mandanna’s female colleagues in the industry, including Kajol, Katrina Kaif and Alia Bhatt have also found themselves in deepfake videos.
Even prime minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over deepfakes claiming one involving was also doing the rounds showing him dancing during garba celebrations. However, other reports said that it was not a deepfake video but involved a lookalike of the prime minister performing.
Indian information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently called deepfake videos a “new threat to democracy”.
Last week, he also chaired a meeting with social media platforms and artificial intelligence firms where he said the federal government would soon come up with a “clear, actionable plan” to address the problem of deepfakes.
