Deepfake video of Indonesian defence minister speaking Arabic spreads ahead of presidential vote

"Prabowo Subianto is fluent in Arabic and mastering eight foreign languages," reads the Indonesian-language caption of this TikTok post, uploaded on November 8, 2023. 

Text superimposed on the video repeats the caption. 

The post's 28-second video, which shows Indonesian presidential candidate and defence minister, Prabowo Subianto, apparently delivering a speech in Arabic, has garnered 55,000 views. 

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Screenshot of the false post, captured on November 10, 2023

"Our admirable presidential candidate, don't hesitate to vote for Prabowo-Gibran 2024," the caption in the Indonesian language also says. 

Prabowo is vying for Indonesia's top post for the third time since he lost in the 2014 and 2019 elections to the incumbent president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo (archived link). His running mate in the 2024 presidential poll is Jokowi's eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka.  

Prabowo went into self-exile in Jordan in 1998 following his dismissal from the Indonesian military over the abductions of democracy activists.

During an election campaign in 2019, he greeted an Al Jazeera cameraman in Arabic, Indonesian media reported here, here and here (archived links here, here and here)

Fadli Zon, deputy chairman of Prabowo's Gerindra Party, said that the former general could speak English, German, French and Arabic (archived link). 

Similar videos also spread in TikTok here, here and here, racking up more than 2.3 million views. 

Deepfake video

A Google reverse image, followed by a further keyword search on YouTube, found a video of the same speech published by local media outlet Warta Kota on November 2, 2023 (archived link).

The video's description says that Prabowo was delivering a speech at an event called "Global Geopolitical & Geostrategic Symposium and Its Influence on Indonesia" at the Indonesian Ministry of Defense on the same day. 

In the genuine video, Prabowo delivers the speech in Indonesian, talking about how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to an increase in the prices of fuel oil and fertilizer. He also says that the Israel-Hamas war will affect Indonesia because the majority of the country's population is Muslim. 

The clip used in the altered video starts at the 1:16 mark of the genuine video. 

Below is a screenshot comparison of the altered video (left) and the genuine footage from Warta Kota (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the altered video (left) and the genuine footage from Warta Kota (right)

Footage of Prabowo's speech at the same event, published by CNN Indonesia and the Ministry of Defence, also shows him speaking in Indonesian (archived links here and here).

The Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information, citing a fact-check report from Indonesian news outlet Kompas.com, said the clip of Prabowo speaking Arabic was a deepfake video using artificial intelligence, or AI (archived links here and here).

Grammatical errors  

An AFP journalist who is a native Arabic speaker found the speech in the altered video contains various grammatical errors and strange sentence structures. The sentences are disjointed and some words like "exception" and "will" have been randomly inserted. 

For example, translated to English, Prabowo in the altered video says: "The war in Ukraine has caused a global rise in fuel price ... exception ... made the war in Ukraine the fertilizers to get them so expenses and rare. If the fertilizers ... an expensive will that affects food production." 

In the genuine speech, he said in Indonesian: "The war in Ukraine has caused the global fuel price to rise dramatically. The war in Ukraine has made fertilizers become more expensive and rare. If fertilizers are expensive and rare, that will affect food production in most parts of the world."

AFP has debunked other AI-generated videos of other Indonesian politicians, such as Indonesian presidential candidate Anies Baswedan speaking Arabic and President Jokowi talking in Mandarin.