Video of Cristiano Ronaldo showing support for Palestinians is a deepfake

A video circulating on social media appears to show the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo expressing support for Palestinians. But this video is a deepfake, and the original has been edited to include fake audio.

In the altered version of the clip shared online Mr Ronaldo appears to say: “As-salam alaykum [Arabic greeting meaning peace be upon you]. I love Palestine. I am Cristiano Ronaldo. You ask me whether I support the people of Palestine. Yes, without a doubt, I stand with Palestine. I always pray for them and will continue to do so, inshallah [if God wills it]. I hope you will also stand by the oppressed people of Palestine and keep them in your prayers. Together, let’s stand for humanity.”

But in the original unedited video, which comes from an interview with Qatar-based Alkass Sports Channels, Mr Ronaldo does not mention Palestine or Palestinians. 

The video, posted on 13 February 2025, instead shows Mr Ronaldo responding to a reporter’s questions about his team’s victory, whether he knew what was happening in Syria, and what he would like to say.

He says he was happy about the win and that the team had played well, and replies to the question about Syria, saying, “I love the country” before walking away.

Mr Ronaldo’s club in the Saudi Pro League, Al Nassr, defeated Al Ahli, on 13 February at the King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Professor Hany Farid, who specialises in digital forensics at the University of California, Berkeley, and is Chief Science Officer at GetReal Labs, a cybersecurity company focused on preventing malicious threats from generative AI, told us the video spreading on social media is “a low-quality lip-sync deepfake” in which the footballer’s mouth “has been modified from the original to be consistent with an AI-generated audio track”. 

He added: “There are obvious visual artifacts around the mouth and clear cuts that can be heard in the audio.”

Professor Rob Cover, Director of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre, also said the video had been altered, highlighting giveaways such as the video looping and then reversing as people in the background can be seen walking past, and then walking backwards. 

“The AI tool used to alter the video has altered the lip and face movement of Ronaldo while failing to generate consistent and logical background footage”, he explained.  

“Secondly, there is evidence of inconsistently skipped frames in the second half of the video. That may occur when a video has been rendered in such a way to reduce the file size, but that would typically be consistent across a video, not partial, changing or random. 

“Finally, the audio is atypically clipped. While to a casual observer the synthetic audio generation is a fairly good match for Ronaldo’s voice, cadence and tempo when speaking in English, there are small gaps or pauses in the background sound that give away the non-authenticity of this video. As with many AI deepfake generators, the audio sounds like it has been captured on a very low-quality microphone, crackling slightly on every ‘s’ sound and appearing to give Ronaldo a slight ‘lisp’ which he does not have in other, verified and authentic recordings.”

We’ve written about suspected deepfake audio clips before, including those supposedly from politicians such as the health secretary Wes Streeting, the Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan and former US President Joe Biden. There’s no evidence that any of these were real recordings of the politicians in question. 

We recently wrote about how we debunk AI-generated content, and we also have an in-depth guide on how to check deepfakes yourself.