The video was generated using artificial intelligence.
This Facebook post containing a video claiming that Halidou Tinto, professor of parasitology and global health scientist, has developed a miracle cure for diabetes is FALSE.
The video first shows a presenter in yellow clothing who mentions: “Professor Halidou Tinto has developed an anti-diabetic drug which allows you to get rid of diabetes permanently in just one month. He will explain to us in detail the effectiveness of this medicine.”
Then we see a man in a gray suit, introduced as Halidou Tinto, speaking and saying: “Hello, my product has helped thousands of people around the world and in our country to get rid of diabetes for good. The effectiveness of the product is not 90% or 95%, but 100%. It’s very simple. We have created a new product that restores the work of the pancreas and normalizes all blood sugar indicators with healthy metabolism, the body releases glucose and increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin activity…”.
PesaCheck reviewed this post and found it to be false.
A reverse image search from a capture of the video via Bing, made it possible to find the original video initially published on TV5 Monde infowith this caption: “The challenges of the fight against malaria”.
The video was posted online on April 25, 2021, the date of the celebration of World Malaria Day.
In the video, journalist Dominique Tchimbakala calls Burkinabè researcher Halidou Tinto via Skype and, from the first seconds, asks him questions about the development of the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine. The vaccine was developed by the Nanoro Clinical Research Unit, west-central Burkina Faso in partnership with the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
Professor Halidou Tinto is visible from the 27th second, in the same frame and the same clothing as that presented in the false publication, explaining the evolution of his team’s work on this vaccine. There is no mention of developing a cure for diabetes.
In response to this false publication, Tinto published a denial in a Burkinabe media, rejecting any link with the authors of the misleading video.
“Using artificial intelligence, they make it appear that Professor Tinto was received live by the presenter of the TV5Monde television news, Dominique Tchimbakala, to talk about his new drug. These are scammers who are either trying to extort money from you or exploit Professor Tinto’s image to sell their products,” Tinto said.
PesaCheck confirmed this statement using DeepFake-O-Meter, a deep fake detection tool. The tool discovered that the video was 79.4% generated by AI.
Continuing its investigations, PesaCheck closely examined the voices of the individuals appearing in the video and found that they were robotic and that the facial expressions were not perfectly synchronized with the words. These characteristics correspond to the typical signs of a deep fake, a sophisticated technique based on artificial intelligence.
This process involves modifying images and sounds to create videos in which the protagonists appear to say words or perform actions that they have never actually done.
A PesaCheck survey has previously shown that diabetes is a chronic disease that cannot be cured permanently. To date, no miracle cure has proven effective in completely curing this pathology.
PesaCheck reviewed a post containing a video claiming that Halidou Tinto, a professor of parasitology and global health scientist, developed a miracle cure for diabetes and found it to be FALSE.
