RED-FACED Leo Varadkar has changed the Government’s security protocols on video calls after he was caught out in an embarrassing Russian prank.
A video emerged online this week of the Taoiseach appearing on a video call with Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus who told the Irish leader to “say hello to your leprechauns”.
The Russian jokers – real names Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov – have managed to catch out a number of world leaders with their prank calls including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Boris Johnson.
The comedians got access to the Taoiseach by pretending to be diplomats from the African Union and using artificial intelligence to change their images and voice.
In a post for the video, the comedians said the Taoiseach “seemed to have drunk a good dose of Guinness” as he “shared his dreams of separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain”.
The Taoiseach was also asked about Ukraine and the possibility of Ireland joining Nato in the call.
Embarrassed Leo Varadkar yesterday told the Irish Sun that he was caught out in the hoax a number of months ago and claimed his call did not look the same as the video published this week.
He said: “It’s not as it appears, by the way, on their video. There were no Russians. They used an AI image of someone who works with the African Union.
“So what they’ve done is they’ve over dubbed it with these Russian voices. They’ve doctored it and edited it.
“So what you’re seeing on that site is not actually what happened. So it is fake in that sense.
“But the way they managed to secure the video call was by impersonating somebody who works for the African Union and at the outset of the call because they used the image of the person and their voice we believed it was genuine.
“But it very quickly became very obvious that there was something afoot and there was something wrong and as you probably know from it I ended the call.
“But I kind of needed to play along for a little while before assuming that it was a suspect call but I think you’ll note from my answers to the questions I was very careful in my answers because I was suspicious immediately and then it just became increasingly obvious through the course of the conversation that it was fake.”
The Taoiseach said Ireland immediately informed the African Union about the prank to avoid other leaders getting caught out.
The Fine Gael leader said the prank has changed how the Government deals with video calls as he wants to have more important conversations in person from now on.
PROCEDURE CHANGE
He said: “As a result of that we have to now change our procedures and we have changed our procedures in relation to video calls.
“It is the new world of artificial intelligence. It is actually really easy now to produce a fake image of somebody on a screen and that fake image can have the persons voice and mannerisms.
“So in some ways now, I think one of the strange consequences of things like AI is that people are going to want to see things for themselves a bit more.
“People are going to be much less trusting of photographs and video and images that they see on screens and are going to want to be able to hear with their own ears and see with their own eyes.
“So we’ll have to have very strict security protocols around this in the future which we do but I do think in general because of the advancements in technology a lot more important things are going to have to happen in person than we might have thought during the pandemic we’re going to move to a virtual world.”