After Indonesia’s legal professional normal’s workplace introduced the arrest of a number of oil executives for alleged corruption, footage showing to point out one of many males demonstrating how high-quality petrol is diluted surfaced on-line. However visible errors within the video point out it has been generated utilizing synthetic intelligence (AI) expertise.
“That is how the CEO of Pertamina mixes Pertalite and Pertamax,” reads the Indonesian-language textual content overlay on the video shared on TikTok on February 28, 2025. “Mixing Pertalite and Pertamax is how the Pertamina CEO made his illicit achieve.”
The clip reveals a person pouring inexperienced liquid from a container labelled “Pertalite” right into a jar of blue fluid marked “Pertamax”. Each are model names for petrol that state-owned power agency PT Pertamina sells.
Screenshot of the false publish, captured on March 3, 2025
The publish surfaced after Indonesia’s legal professional normal’s workplace said on February 25 it had arrested executives from subsidiaries of PT Pertamina in an alleged $12 billion graft case (archived link).
Seven suspects, together with no less than 4 Pertamina officers, had been arrested, it stated in an announcement.
They’re accused of working collectively between 2018 and 2023 to import crude from abroad suppliers at larger costs reasonably than supply it domestically as mandated by Indonesian legislation.
The case additionally concerned a petrol blending process that’s “not permitted”, in response to the legal professional normal’s workplace (archived link).
Pertamina stated in an announcement that it could respect the investigation.
Comparable movies racked up greater than 16 million views on X, SnackVideo and TikTok.
“The corruption suspect has proven us easy methods to combine the petrol, why does Pertamina nonetheless make excuses?” one person wrote, showing to imagine the clip is real.
“It seems they did the blending by themselves,” one other stated.
Visible errors
A watermark on the higher proper nook of the video signifies it was created utilizing PixVerse.ai, which in response to its YouTube profile is a generative AI mannequin that may “rework” textual content prompts and pictures “into gorgeous movies inside minutes” (archived here and here).
Keyword searches on YouTube surfaced a video report from broadcaster Kompas on February 27 exhibiting an analogous scene however with out the supposed petrol mixing half (archived link).
Screenshot comparability between the false publish (L) and the clip from Kompas TV
An earlier report from Antara information company features a closely-matching picture. It recognized the person as Riva Siahaan, CEO of a Pertamina subsidiary agency, leaving the legal professional normal’s constructing after he was arrested (archived link).
An evaluation of the video additionally discovered a number of visible errors. It begins with the person’s handcuffs out of the blue disappearing to point out him holding a container.
Two seconds in, his hand dips into the inexperienced liquid with out getting moist. And when he pours the fluid to the opposite container, it doesn’t seem to get full.
Whereas there isn’t a foolproof technique to spot AI-generated media, figuring out watermarks and visible inconsistencies may also help, as errors nonetheless happen regardless of the meteoric progress in generative AI.
Screenshots of frames from the video highlighting the visible errors
AFP has beforehand debunked misinformation in Indonesia utilizing AI-generated clips.
