Phone Call Between Swati Maliwal, Dhruv Rathee Viral? A Fact Check

An AI-generated phone conversation between AAP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal and YouTuber Dhruv Rathee is being shared on social media as a real conversation between the two.

In the viral clip, Ms Maliwal can be heard explaining to Mr Rathee how she was assaulted in front of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his wife Sunita Kejriwal, and also requesting Mr Rathee not to make a video on it. The two then goes on to discuss whether Mr Rathee's 'payments' were coming in time.

BOOM consulted with two different AI detection tools - Itisaar and Contrails - with both confirming to us the audio going viral has been generated using AI, and is not a genuine conversation between Swati Maliwal and Dhruv Rathee.

On May 13, Swati Maliwal, in a complaint to Delhi Police, alleged that she was attacked by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's aide, Bibhav Kumar, inside the Chief Minister's residence. Mr Kumar has denied the allegation and written to the Delhi Police for registering an FIR on his complaint too. The Delhi police arrested Kumar on May 18, 2024, and he currently remains in police custody. Following this, YouTuber Dhruv Rathee made a video on the incident, and alleged that Swati Maliwal's complaint was spurious. The viral audio recording is being shared in this backdrop.

A user on X shared the AI-generated audio with a Hindi caption, which translates to English as, "Delhi. Video of Swati Maliwal and Dhruv Rathi goes viral. Swati Maliwal asked Dhruv Rathee not to make the video on your request. The beating happened at the behest of Arvind Kejriwal and Sunita Kejriwal. Dhruv Rathee makes videos on the agenda of the opposition

Fact Check

BOOM listened to the audio closely, and found a few discrepancies that suggested at the possibility of it being synthetic in nature. At the 0:09 mark, where Ms Maliwal's voice can be heard saying that she was hit in the presence of both Arvind and Sunita Kejriwal, there is a jump-cut with her voices being overlaid on top of each other.

Taking cue from this, we ran the audio clip through deepfake detection tool Itisaar, created by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur. The results from the tool suggested with a very high confidence that the audio was a deepfake.

BOOM also sent the audio clip to deepfake researchers at Contrails, who further confirmed to us that the viral phone call is an "AI audio spoof", and added that, "Both speakers have clear patterns of AI voice cloning."

(This story was originally published by Boom and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)