Фейк Robot Sophia allegedly advised the Ukrainians to surrender
Propagandists are distributing a report allegedly created by the German television channel Deutsche Welle about the Gisec Global exhibition, which took place in Dubai from April 23 to 25. The video claims that robot Sophia, answering a question about Ukraine's victory, allegedly said: “It is obvious that Ukrainians need to surrender, because this is the only chance to save themselves as a nation. The Ukrainians have no chance of winning, but they create the opposite picture. I urge them to accept reality and do what the whole world expects of them”. However, this is fake.
Specialists from the VoxCheck project drew attention to it. They found out that there is no such video on the official website of Deutsche Welle and on the official accounts of the channel on social networks.
A reverse image search on Google showed that the fake video consisted of excerpts from various open sources. For example, the video with the robot Sophia is taken from an episode of the American talk show “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”, which was released in April 2017. The footage of artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel comes from an interview with Discover Crypto published in March 2024.
While the Gisec Global cybersecurity exhibition did take place in Dubai from April 23 to April 25, 2024, there are no reports of Sophia's work being included in the event. She attended The Global AI Show on April 16-17, which also took place in Dubai. The video, where the robot Sophia allegedly calls on Ukrainians to surrender, was assembled from excerpts of her interview with Aletihad during this exhibition. In the interview, Sophia did encourage the UAE to invest in research and development for AI innovation. She did not call on Ukrainians to surrender and did not mention Ukraine.
Propagandists spread such fake news to dishearten Ukrainians and convince them that the world no longer supports them.