Rome, June 26, 2022 – They thought they were talking to the mayor of Kievbut several first European citizens were fooled with fake phone calls. To report it is the same Vitaly Klitschko through the Ukrainian agency UKrinform, accusing the Russians who invaded his country of practicing war on all fronts. “Including the spread of disinformation to put Ukrainian politicians in a bad light, turning them against their Western partners in order to stop Western aid to Ukraine,” she claims.
To fall into the trap too the mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, who on Friday took part in a call on the Webex video conferencing platform with a person who, according to her, looked like Klitschko. “There were no signs that the videoconference was not taking place with a real person,” she said in her office in a statement. The Berliner Buergmeisterin and the fake mayor of the Ukrainian capital spoke normally for about fifteen minutes, then Giffey became suspicious of a series of strange questions about refugees who unduly take advantage of German social services and the request for help for a gay demonstration in Kiev, considered curious in wartime. So the call fell. A similar episode also happened toalkalde from Madrid José Luis Martinez-Almeida, who however interrupted the conversation.
The incriminated false conversations are the result of tecnologia ‘Deepfake’which through artificial intelligence it allows you to replace people’s faces, expressions and voices with synthetic images, computer generated and modulated masks. It is a “criminal” activity and “we need to urgently investigate the perpetrators”, she added. Klitschko also stressed that he is fluent in German and English and does not need a translator in these two languages.