Putin’s voice in BRICS address raises eyebrows

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 99 points – Putin’s voice in BRICS address raises eyebrows
thehill.com

As expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday addressed an annual business summit of world leaders gathered in South Africa. But this time, the Russian leader delivered his remarks with an altered voice.

Putin appeared via a prerecorded video at a meeting for a grouping of the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) in Johannesburg, where he discussed the affairs of the business council in an altered, deep voice.

The voice, much lower than Putin’s regular pitch, appears to be a type of generated AI voice changer, but it’s unclear why his voice was changed and how exactly it was altered. Putin, who appears to be speaking from his office at the Kremlin in Moscow in the video, did not travel to Johannesburg for the summit because he would have risked an arrest.

The Russian leader is facing a global arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the kidnapping of Ukrainian children. South Africa is a part of the ICC and would have been obliged to arrest him.

The 32-second clip with Putin’s distorted voice is from a larger roughly 15-minute video address that was played for the BRICS audience on Tuesday. The short clip appears to be from the beginning of the video.

The recorded video message on the Kremlin’s website retains Putin’s normal voice, but the Russian leader coughs several times in the beginning. Putin appeared via video link on Wednesday with his regular voice, according to a clip shared by Russian state-run media outlet TASS.

In his Tuesday remarks, Putin discussed Russia’s willingness to return to the Black Sea grain deal with Ukraine if certain conditions are met, a line Moscow has repeated.

The deal, which Russia dropped out of last month, had allowed Ukraine to transport important grain products out of the Black Sea without interference from Russian forces.

Putin has used the major summit in South Africa to accuse the West of starting the war in Ukraine and to shore up support with allies at a time when Russia is increasingly isolated on the international stage. On Wednesday, world leaders agreed to expand the alliance.

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The obvious conspiracy theory here is that Putin is dead and being deep faked by oligarchs(?) behind the curtain. We can extend this logic to say that Wagner backed out of their mutiny for seemingly no reason because Prigozhin was shown behind the curtain and was promised his own place behind the Putin-face. Ofc rather than dilute their own power to a mercenary with questionable ambitions, they just fuckin shot him down as he was safely preparing to "exile" to keep the story straight.

Prigozhin is dead now though. Or is he? 🤔

I gotta wonder myself, as I'm sure he knew they were coming for him. Even if he's not, he's basically dead, as he now has to stay in hiding for the rest of his life and can't participate in politics anymore.

Well, the voice is the easiest part to deepfake reliably. Seems odd that it's the thing that's off in this speech.

Xi didn't give his speech, Putin's getting deep faked, what a cluster this conference turned out to be.

Just guessing based on the earlier recorded message in his normal voice where he coughs a couple of times. Maybe he has a cold, or even Covid, and his normal voice is hoarse or raspy, and not how he wants to be seen.

This makes sense. They previously set up an AI voice of his for these situations, but when he heard it he didn't like how he sounds so made them make him sound "manlier". Then they need to use it and it ends up not fooling anyone for the very obvious reasons.

I have always been of the opinion that Putin has a funny voice but I wouldn't be all that surprised if there was some sort of Weekend at Bernie's going on.