A Calcuttan who saw a video of a man resembling industrialist Mukesh Ambani on social media claiming anyone investing ₹22,000 in his company will get a minimum return of ₹50,000 per day, was cheated after he clicked on a link that came with the clip.

A formal complaint has been lodged. Police said it was a deepfake AI-generated video.

On Saturday, police received a fraud complaint from Biswajay Dutta, a resident of Hara Chandra Mullick Street in north Calcutta’s Shyampukur.

Dutta reported the loss of over ₹35,000 in two transactions after he clicked on the link on Facebook.

“Thinking that he would get ₹50,000 every day once he invests ₹22,000 or more by clicking on a link, the complainant made two transactions and lost ₹17,185 and ₹17,355. He realised the fraud only when nothing was credited to his bank account, unlike what he was promised,” said an officer of the north division of Kolkata Police.

According to officers, one was made in favour of Bitwave Innovations Limited, the other to Euphorix Technologies.

According to the complainant, he came across the video on Facebook and clicked on the link, thinking it was genuine. “Soon after, he received a call saying it was from the office of the industrialist and that he needed to invest money to get daily returns,” said the officer.

During the investigation, it proved to be a deepfake created using artificial intelligence, the police said.

“Deepfake videos look almost real. But there are ways to identify whether the video is genuine or fake,” said an officer of the police’s cyber cell.

The officer added that in deepfake videos, the movement of the character’s lips will usually not synchronise with the embedded audio.

Deepfake videos of celebrities, politicians or people whose voice samples are easily available on the Internet are often generated to mislead people, spread misinformation, or for financial fraud.

“In such AI-generated videos, usually the lip-syncing does not match with the audio and the visuals, the light is inadequate, the background is blurred, and the resolution is of low quality,” said an officer.

A video of people resembling Infosys founder Narayana Murthy and his wife Sudha, where they were seen promoting an investment platform and promising an income of ₹2.5 lakh a day, was available across social media platforms a few weeks ago.