After Rashmika Mandanna and Kajol, now Alia Bhatt has fallen victim to a deepfake video. An obscene video where Alia’s face has been edited on to someone else’s body is going viral online, yet again sparking concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI).

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On Monday, a video claiming to feature Alia Bhatt went viral online. In the video, a woman wearing a blue dress sat on the bed while looking at the camera and dancing rather suggestively. While the doctored video had Alia’s face on it, soon Twitter users began sharing the original video which had some other woman in the frame. Many fans of the actress shared the original video to spread the word that the one with Alia had been created using deepfake.

A side-by-side comparison of Alia's deepfake with the original video

Deepfake is an AI tool that uses someone’s likeness to morph their face on a video. While tools like Photoshop have been used to do that for still pictures for years, for videos, this is a rather new development. Till a few years ago, most good deepfake editors were paid but now with the proliferation of AI tools, this technology has become much more easily available, leading to such misuse.

Earlier this year, a lewd video where Rashmika Mandanna’s face was morphed on a video featuring British influencer Zara Patel went viral. A few days later, a deepfake video of Kajol also surfaced online. The incidents had led to fans and even central ministers calling for increased restrictions of these AI tools and better use of social media. Even Rashmika had issued a long statement condemning her deepfake video.

After this latest incident, fans of Alia Bhatt have reiterated these concerns. One tweeted, “There needs to be some regulation of these AI tools. It has become so easy to defame anyone now.” Another added, “This is gross misuse of technology.”