#FactCheck- Claim of Paper Currency Being Discontinued from June 30 Along with AI-Generated Audio of PM Modi Goes Viral
Executive Summary
A post is being widely circulated on social media claiming that paper currency will be discontinued in the country from June 30 and replaced with new plastic notes. The claim is being shared along with an audio clip purportedly featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, warning people that paper notes will no longer be valid after June 30 and that new plastic currency will be introduced in the market.CyberPeace Research Wing research found the claim to be false. The viral post about discontinuation of paper currency from June 30 is baseless, and the audio attributed to the Prime Minister has been generated using artificial intelligence.
Claim:
An X (formerly Twitter) user shared the viral post claiming that paper currency will be completely withdrawn from circulation in India from June 30 and replaced with plastic notes. The post includes an audio clip allegedly featuring PM Modi.
Post link and archive link can be seen below:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2172216560209848
Factcheck
To verify the claim, we conducted a keyword search online. During the research, we found a report published by NDTV on June 6, which stated that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is currently examining a proposal related to polymer-based (plastic) currency notes. The report clarified that the proposal is at a very preliminary stage and no final decision has been made. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra stated that the central bank is evaluating the pros and cons of polymer notes and will inform the public once any decision is taken. The report does not mention any discontinuation of existing paper currency.
We also checked official sources, including the Prime Minister’s social media handles and the Reserve Bank of India website, but found no announcement or notification regarding the discontinuation of paper currency from June 30.
Since the claim included an audio clip attributed to PM Modi, we analyzed it using AI voice detection tools. The Undetectable AI tool identified the voice with 99% probability as AI-generated.
Conclusion:
The research clearly shows that the claim about discontinuation of paper currency from June 30 is baseless. The audio attributed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also AI-generated and does not represent any official statement.
Related Blogs
Executive Summary
A video featuring Bollywood actor Aamir Khan is being widely shared on social media. The video is being linked to his alleged third wedding with Gauri Spratt, with users claiming that both of his former wives, Reena Dutta and Kiran Rao, attended the ceremony. CyberPeace Research Wing research found the claim to be misleading. The viral video is not from Aamir Khan’s alleged third wedding. It is actually from the wedding celebrations of his daughter, Ira Khan, held two years ago. Furthermore, no credible media report confirms that Reena Dutta and Kiran Rao attended Aamir Khan’s alleged wedding with Gauri Spratt.
Claim
On July 5, 2026, an X (formerly Twitter) user shared the viral video with the caption: “At the age of 61, Aamir Khan got married for the third time and even invited his former wives to the wedding.” The post link, archive link, and screenshots are provided below.
https://x.com/anilyadavmedia1/status/2073728740048208226
Fact Check
To verify the claim, we extracted several keyframes from the viral video and performed a reverse image search using Google Lens. During the research, we found the same video uploaded on the YouTube channel Viral Bollywood on January 4, 2024. The visuals in that video matched the viral clip exactly. The post link and screenshots are provided below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV39oUh-_tU
In the next stage of our research, we found another video published by Zoom on January 4, 2024. The visuals in this video also matched those seen in the viral clip. The post link and screenshots are provided below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Um5eB6kpM
We also looked into whether Reena Dutta and Kiran Rao attended Aamir Khan’s alleged third wedding. During this process, we found a report published by Aaj Tak, which stated that both of Aamir Khan’s former wives did not attend the alleged wedding ceremony. The post link and screenshots are provided below.
Conclusion
Our research found that the viral video is not from Aamir Khan’s alleged third wedding. It is an old video from the wedding celebrations of his daughter, Ira Khan, held in 2024. Moreover, there is no credible evidence or media report confirming that Reena Dutta and Kiran Rao attended Aamir Khan’s alleged wedding with Gauri Spratt. Therefore, the viral claim is misleading.
In the vast, uncharted territories of the digital world, a sinister phenomenon is proliferating at an alarming rate. It's a world where artificial intelligence (AI) and human vulnerability intertwine in a disturbing combination, creating a shadowy realm of non-consensual pornography. This is the world of deepfake pornography, a burgeoning industry that is as lucrative as it is unsettling.
According to a recent assessment, at least 100,000 deepfake porn videos are readily available on the internet, with hundreds, if not thousands, being uploaded daily. This staggering statistic prompts a chilling question: what is driving the creation of such a vast number of fakes? Is it merely for amusement, or is there a more sinister motive at play?
Recent Trends and Developments
An investigation by India Today’s Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team reveals that deepfake pornography is rapidly morphing into a thriving business. AI enthusiasts, creators, and experts are extending their expertise, investors are injecting money, and even small financial companies to tech giants like Google, VISA, Mastercard, and PayPal are being misused in this dark trade. Synthetic porn has existed for years, but advances in AI and the increasing availability of technology have made it easier—and more profitable—to create and distribute non-consensual sexually explicit material. The 2023 State of Deepfake report by Home Security Heroes reveals a staggering 550% increase in the number of deepfakes compared to 2019.
What’s the Matter with Fakes?
But why should we be concerned about these fakes? The answer lies in the real-world harm they cause. India has already seen cases of extortion carried out by exploiting deepfake technology. An elderly man in UP’s Ghaziabad, for instance, was tricked into paying Rs 74,000 after receiving a deep fake video of a police officer. The situation could have been even more serious if the perpetrators had decided to create deepfake porn of the victim.
The danger is particularly severe for women. The 2023 State of Deepfake Report estimates that at least 98 percent of all deepfakes is porn and 99 percent of its victims are women. A study by Harvard University refrained from using the term “pornography” for creating, sharing, or threatening to create/share sexually explicit images and videos of a person without their consent. “It is abuse and should be understood as such,” it states.
Based on interviews of victims of deepfake porn last year, the study said 63 percent of participants talked about experiences of “sexual deepfake abuse” and reported that their sexual deepfakes had been monetised online. It also found “sexual deepfake abuse to be particularly harmful because of the fluidity and co-occurrence of online offline experiences of abuse, resulting in endless reverberations of abuse in which every aspect of the victim’s life is permanently disrupted”.
Creating deepfake porn is disturbingly easy. There are largely two types of deepfakes: one featuring faces of humans and another featuring computer-generated hyper-realistic faces of non-existing people. The first category is particularly concerning and is created by superimposing faces of real people on existing pornographic images and videos—a task made simple and easy by AI tools.
During the investigation, platforms hosting deepfake porn of stars like Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Jennifer Aniston, Aishwarya Rai, Rashmika Mandanna to TV actors and influencers like Aanchal Khurana, Ahsaas Channa, and Sonam Bajwa and Anveshi Jain were encountered. It takes a few minutes and as little as Rs 40 for a user to create a high-quality fake porn video of 15 seconds on platforms like FakeApp and FaceSwap.
The Modus Operandi
These platforms brazenly flaunt their business association and hide behind frivolous declarations such as: the content is “meant solely for entertainment” and “not intended to harm or humiliate anyone”. However, the irony of these disclaimers is not lost on anyone, especially when they host thousands of non-consensual deepfake pornography.
As fake porn content and its consumers surge, deepfake porn sites are rushing to forge collaborations with generative AI service providers and have integrated their interfaces for enhanced interoperability. The promise and potential of making quick bucks have given birth to step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and websites that offer tools and programs, recommendations, and ratings.
Nearly 90 per cent of all deepfake porn is hosted by dedicated platforms that charge for long-duration premium fake content and for creating porn—of whoever a user wants, and take requests for celebrities. To encourage them further, they enable creators to monetize their content.
One such website, Civitai, has a system in place that pays “rewards” to creators of AI models that generate “images of real people'', including ordinary people. It also enables users to post AI images, prompts, model data, and LoRA (low-rank adaptation of large language models) files used in generating the images. Model data designed for adult content is gaining great popularity on the platform, and they are not only targeting celebrities. Common people are equally susceptible.
Access to premium fake porn, like any other content, requires payment. But how can a gateway process payment for sexual content that lacks consent? It seems financial institutes and banks are not paying much attention to this legal question. During the investigation, many such websites accepting payments through services like VISA, Mastercard, and Stripe were found.
Those who have failed to register/partner with these fintech giants have found a way out. While some direct users to third-party sites, others use personal PayPal accounts to manually collect money in the personal accounts of their employees/stakeholders, which potentially violates the platform's terms of use that ban the sale of “sexually oriented digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium.”
Among others, the MakeNude.ai web app – which lets users “view any girl without clothing” in “just a single click” – has an interesting method of circumventing restrictions around the sale of non-consensual pornography. The platform has partnered with Ukraine-based Monobank and Dublin’s BetaTransfer Kassa which operates in “high-risk markets”.
BetaTransfer Kassa admits to serving “clients who have already contacted payment aggregators and received a refusal to accept payments, or aggregators stopped payments altogether after the resource was approved or completely freeze your funds”. To make payment processing easy, MakeNude.ai seems to be exploiting the donation ‘jar’ facility of Monobank, which is often used by people to donate money to Ukraine to support it in the war against Russia.
The Indian Scenario
India currently is on its way to design dedicated legislation to address issues arising out of deepfakes. Though existing general laws requiring such platforms to remove offensive content also apply to deepfake porn. However, persecution of the offender and their conviction is extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies as it is a boundaryless crime and sometimes involves several countries in the process.
A victim can register a police complaint under provisions of Section 66E and Section 66D of the IT Act, 2000. Recently enacted Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 aims to protect the digital personal data of users. Recently Union Government issued an advisory to social media intermediaries to identify misinformation and deepfakes. Comprehensive law promised by Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnav will be able to address these challenges.
Conclusion
In the end, the unsettling dance of AI and human vulnerability continues in the dark web of deepfake pornography. It's a dance that is as disturbing as it is fascinating, a dance that raises questions about the ethical use of technology, the protection of individual rights, and the responsibility of financial institutions. It's a dance that we must all be aware of, for it is a dance that affects us all.
References
- https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/deepfake-porn-artificial-intelligence-women-fake-photos-2471855-2023-12-04
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/the-legal-net-to-trap-peddlers-of-deepfakes-101701520933515.html
- https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/with-deepfakes-getting-better-and-more-alarming-seeing-is-no-longer-believing/
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Introduction
The Indian Cabinet has approved a comprehensive national-level IndiaAI Mission with a budget outlay ofRs.10,371.92 crore. The mission aims to strengthen the Indian AI innovation ecosystem by democratizing computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, enabling industry collaboration, providing startup risk capital, ensuring socially-impactful A projects, and bolstering ethical AI. The mission will be implemented by the'IndiaAI' Independent Business Division (IBD) under the Digital India Corporation (DIC) and consists of several components such as IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), IndiaAI Datasets Platform, India AI Application Development Initiative, IndiaAI Future Skills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI over the next 5 years.
This financial outlay is intended to befulfilled through a public-private partnership model, to ensure a structured implementation of the IndiaAI Mission. The main objective is to create and nurture an ecosystem for India’s AI innovation. This mission is intended to act as a catalyst for shaping the future of AI for India and the world. AI has the potential to become an active enabler of the digital economy and the Indian government aims to harness its full potential to benefit its citizens and drive the growth of its economy.
Key Objectives of India's AI Mission
● With the advancements in data collection, processing and computational power, intelligent systems can be deployed in varied tasks and decision-making to enable better connectivity and enhance productivity.
● India’s AI Mission will concentrate on benefiting India and addressing societal needs in primary areas of healthcare, education, agriculture, smart cities and infrastructure, including smart mobility and transportation.
● This mission will work with extensive academia-industry interactions to ensure the development of core research capability at the national level. This initiative will involve international collaborations and efforts to advance technological frontiers by generating new knowledge and developing and implementing innovative applications.
The strategies developed for implementing the IndiaAI Mission are via Public-Private Partnerships, Skilling initiatives and AI Policy and Regulation. An example of the work towards the public-private partnership is the pre-bid meeting that the IT Ministry hosted on 29th August2024, which saw industrial participation from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks.
Components of IndiaAI Mission
The IndiaAI Compute Capacity: The IndiaAI Compute pillar will build a high-end scalable AI computing ecosystem to cater to India's rapidly expanding AI start-ups and research ecosystem. The ecosystem will comprise AI compute infrastructure of 10,000 or more GPUs, built through public-private partnerships. An AI marketplace will offer AI as a service and pre-trained models to AI innovators.
The IndiaAI Innovation Centre will undertake the development and deployment of indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific foundational models in critical sectors. The IndiaAI Datasets Platform will streamline access to quality on-personal datasets for AI innovation.
The IndiaAI Future Skills pillar will mitigate barriers to entry into AI programs and increase AI courses in undergraduate, master-level, and Ph.D. programs. Data and AI Labs will be set up in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across India to impart foundational-level courses.
The IndiaAI Startup Financing pillar will support and accelerate deep-tech AI startups, providing streamlined access to funding for futuristic AI projects.
The Safe & Trusted AI pillar will enable the implementation of responsible AI projects and the development of indigenous tools and frameworks, self-assessment check lists for innovators, and other guidelines and governance frameworks by recognising the need for adequate guardrails to advance the responsible development, deployment, and adoption of AI.
CyberPeace Considerations for the IndiaAI Mission
● Data privacy and security are paramount as emerging privacy instruments aim to ensure ethical AI use. Addressing bias and fairness in AI remains a significant challenge, especially with poor-quality or tampered datasets that can lead to flawed decision-making, posing risks to fairness, privacy, and security.
● Geopolitical tensions and export control regulations restrict access to cutting-edge AI technologies and critical hardware, delaying progress and impacting data security. In India, where multilingualism and regional diversity are key characteristics, the unavailability of large, clean, and labeled datasets in Indic languages hampers the development of fair and robust AI models suited to the local context.
● Infrastructure and accessibility pose additional hurdles in India’s AI development. The country faces challenges in building computing capacity, with delays in procuring essential hardware, such as GPUs like Nvidia’s A100 chip, hindering businesses, particularly smaller firms. AI development relies heavily on robust cloud computing infrastructure, which remains in its infancy in India. While initiatives like AIRAWAT signal progress, significant gaps persist in scaling AI infrastructure. Furthermore, the scarcity of skilled AI professionals is a pressing concern, alongside the high costs of implementing AI in industries like manufacturing. Finally, the growing computational demands of AI lead to increased energy consumption and environmental impact, raising concerns about balancing AI growth with sustainable practices.
Conclusion
We advocate for ethical and responsible AI development adoption to ensure ethical usage, safeguard privacy, and promote transparency. By setting clear guidelines and standards, the nation would be able to harness AI's potential while mitigating risks and fostering trust. The IndiaAI Mission will propel innovation, build domestic capacities, create highly-skilled employment opportunities, and demonstrate how transformative technology can be used for social good and enhance global competitiveness.
References
● https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2012375
