Deepfakes v pre-bunking: is Russia losing the infowar?

Speaking behind a podium bearing the Ukrainian state emblem, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his now signature green attire, calls on his soldiers to lay down their weapons and return to their families. The one-minute clip is a deepfake, the term for a sophisticated hoax that uses artificial intelligence to create a phoney image, most commonly fake videos of people. A deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on his soldiers to lay down their weapons was reportedly uploaded to a hacked Ukrainian news website today, per @Shayan86 pic.twitter.com/tXLrYECGY4 What unfolded next was the latest episode in the infowar that has accompanied the Russia-Ukraine conflict, a war being waged across social media platforms, via satellite images of battlefields and on hackers' keyboards. Zelenskiy posted a bona fide response on his Instagram account on Wednesday dismissing the "childish provocation" and telling Russian troops to return home.