On December 17, a video of the President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, was disseminated on Facebook (1, 2) in Russian. The video includes a Russian-language description, which translates into Georgian as follows: Salome Zourabichvili admitted how she makes money. Now, any citizen of Georgia can become a millionaire.
According to the interview, with an investment of GEL 700, citizens can receive GEL 30,000.
The video circulated under the name of Salome Zourabichvili was taken from a Sky News interview on October 28, 2024, which was originally in English. The video has been edited, and both the journalist’s and the president’s voices have been altered into Russian, likely using artificial intelligence.
On October 28, 2024, British media outlet Sky News published an interview with the President of Georgia. The video shared on Facebook pages was taken from this interview. In the interview, Zourabichvili evaluates the results of the parliamentary election, stating that, in reality, pro-European parties were the winners.
In the authentic video, the interview is in English. The Russian voiceover, which accompanies the video shared on social media, has likely been programmatically generated using artificial intelligence and later added. Both Zourabichvili’s and the journalist’s lip movements have been digitally altered to match the Russian text. The fact that the video has been edited is also confirmed by Truemedia.org, a tool designed to detect artificial intelligence and deepfakes.
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What do we know about the Facebook pages?
The page “Business Breakthroughs,” which published the video of Salome Zourabichvili, was created on August 31 and, as of 3:00 PM on October 17, has 11 likes. At that time, only eight posts had been published on the page. However, Zourabichvili’s video does not appear on the timeline of the page, which indicates that the post is targeting a specific audience and is only visible through advertisements. The other posts on this page are in English.
Another page, “Art of Glam,” was created on August 4 and, as of 3:00 PM on October 17, has 21 likes. The page has only five posts published. Similar to “Business Breakthroughs,” Salome Zourabichvili’s video is not visible in the timeline of Art of Glam either. Consequently, the post is also targeted at a specific audience and promoted as an advertisement.
Both posts redirect to the website newsgeorgiee.com, which mimics the visual design of the Georgian media outlet Kviris Palitra and even indicates its website address. This website has been created for fraudulent purposes and attempts to gain credibility by imitating Kviris Palitra. According to the website registration search tool whois.domaintools.com, the site was registered on December 8.
Fraudulent information using the image of the President of Georgia has been repeatedly disseminated in the past. The Myth Detector has published several articles on this topic.
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