Deepfake videos on TikTok falsely show celebrities endorsing Lula for 2026 election
Deepfake videos posted on TikTok in Brazil falsely showed footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi and actress Bruna Marquezine endorsing President Lula for the 2026 election. Fact-checkers traced the footage to unrelated original videos and confirmed the endorsements were AI-generated fabrications intended to manipulate political opinion.
What happened
TikTok pages published videos created using deepfake technology that showed Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Bruna Marquezine appearing to endorse President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for the 2026 presidential election.
The creators used AI algorithms to manipulate existing footage: Ronaldo's video came from a 2021 recording when he played for Manchester United, thanking him for a Globe Soccer Awards prize; Marquezine's video was from a June 2020 TikTok in which she dubbed a meme of herself; and Messi's video came from a YouTube shorts post.
The deepfake videos were designed to appear realistic but contained identical speech patterns between Ronaldo and Messi videos, suggesting the creator used similar commands to generate both.
Reported impact
The false endorsements were spread on TikTok with the apparent objective of stimulating political support for the PT candidate ahead of the 2026 elections.
Index analysis
Projeto Comprova used reverse video searches to trace the original source footage and confirm the videos were AI-manipulated repurposings of unrelated content.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.