#FactCheck- Hong Kong Fire Video Falsely Shared as Footage of Recent Israeli Attack on Iran

Introduction

In June 2026, Eros Innovation launched Eros Music Worlds, describing itself as the world's first "large cultural music platform". Its first two acts, Jordan and Tanu, are not singers in any conventional sense; they are AI-native personas built from Eros's own film characters, powered by models trained on a licensed corpus of roughly 1.5 trillion cultural tokens drawn from 11,000 films. Alongside them sits a strategic partnership with the family of Mohammed Rafi, the late playback legend, to produce new recordings, a live concert franchise, and a music academy in his name. It's a tidy preview of where AI in music is actually headed: not a novelty generator bolted onto the old industry, but a new kind of media company built around owned IP, licensed data, and characters designed to outlive any single song.

Beyond the demo

The last eighteen months have produced a stream of "firsts". Xania Monet, an AI-voiced R&B act built by Mississippi poet Telisha Jones using Suno, became the first AI artist to chart on a Billboard airplay ranking and was signed by Hallwood Media after a bidding war that reportedly reached $3 million. Breaking Rust, Enlly Blue and Juno Skye followed onto country, rock and Christian charts within weeks. None of this happened in a vacuum: Suno and Udio, the two dominant AI music generators, went from being sued by every major label in mid-2024 to signing licensing settlements with Universal and Warner by late 2025. Voice cloning has run a parallel track from the viral 2023 track "Heart on My Sleeve", which mimicked Drake and The Weeknd without consent, to a wave of Indian cases where AI tools recreated a specific singer's timbre for commercial use. Composition and production tools are now routine studio infrastructure rather than curiosities; the interesting frontier has shifted to multilingual adaptation and catalogue reanimation. Eros has promised 34-language localisation for its AI artists, a scale no dubbing studio could match manually. A related, if less music-specific, signal came from Collective Artists Network's AI-powered Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, produced with Prasar Bharati. AI tools handled pre-visualisation, multi-language dubbing sync and sound design, while composers and voice directors retained control of tone and emotion, a template other Indian studios are likely to copy for scoring and localising large-scale cultural content cheaply.

Where the money actually is?

The commercial case for labels isn't "AI makes music at scale", because scale alone isn't value. Deezer, the only major platform publishing detection data, reported in July 2026 that AI-generated tracks had crossed 50% of daily uploads, around 90,000 tracks a day, up from 10,000 in January 2025. Yet those tracks account for only 1–3% of actual streams, and Deezer flags 85% of that listening as fraudulent bot activity. Generating music has become nearly free; getting anyone to listen hasn't. The real opportunity for rights holders lies elsewhere: licensing catalogues into controlled ecosystems (Universal's 2026 platform with Udio, Warner's deals with both Udio and Suno), reviving legacy artists for new audiences (Eros-Rafi), and using AI for the unglamorous, high-volume work of localisation, sync placement and short-form content that never justified full production budgets before. AI-native performers also travel well into gaming, virtual concerts and brand collaboration formats built for characters rather than people, where a synthetic act never ages, never cancels a tour and can be licensed into a dozen campaigns simultaneously. That is a genuinely new revenue line, but it's a narrow one; it monetises IP ownership, not music generation itself. IFPI's Global Music Report 2026 shows the underlying business is healthy: revenues reached $31.7 billion, up 6.4% — but that growth is still driven overwhelmingly by human catalogues and paid subscriptions, not AI-generated volumes.

The legal fault lines

This is where India's position is genuinely instructive and unresolved. The Copyright Act, 1957, defines the author of a "computer-generated" work as the person who causes it to be created (language added in 1994 for a world of human-directed software, not autonomous generative models), and Indian courts haven't yet settled how far it stretches. What's clearer is the industry's stance on training data: The Indian music industry body, alongside T-Series, Saregama and Sony Music, has sought to join the ANI Media suit against OpenAI in the Delhi High Court, arguing that scraping sound recordings to train models without a licence breaches copyright, a case they say is "crucial for the entire music industry in India, and even worldwide".

Personality rights have moved faster than legislation. In the absence of a dedicated statute, Indian courts have built protection case by case: the Delhi High Court's 2023 order shielding Anil Kapoor's voice and likeness from AI misuse and the Bombay High Court's 2024 ruling in Arijit Singh v Codible Ventures, India's first AI voice-cloning judgement, which granted an injunction spanning every medium, explicitly including the metaverse and generative-AI tools, and rejected fair-use and parody defences outright. Similar orders have since followed for Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and others. The pattern mirrors, but predates, statutory responses abroad: Tennessee's 2024 ELVIS Act was the first US law to protect voice explicitly as property, and the federal NO FAKES Act remains pending. The US Copyright Office's January 2025 report reaffirmed that human authorship is the bedrock of copyrightability, denying protection to fully AI-generated output while leaving substantially human-directed hybrid works to case-by-case review. Two regimes are converging on the same instinct that consent and human contribution must anchor ownership through different legal tools: India via judge-made personality rights and the US via statute and Copyright Office guidance.

Who bears the risk?

The disruption isn't evenly spread. Session singers, jingle artists, dubbing performers and early-career composers, the layer of the industry that supplies craft rather than fame, are most exposed since their work is precisely what generative tools now approximate cheaply. A PRS for Music survey of over 2,600 creators found 79% worried about AI competing directly with their output and 76% expecting it to hurt their livelihoods. CISAC has projected AI could erode musicians' incomes by nearly a quarter by 2028. Separately, roughly a fifth of professional voice actors surveyed say they've already lost work to a synthetic voice. For streaming platforms, the risk is structural: as AI supply floods catalogues, royalty pools shared across all streams get diluted, discoverability worsens, and fraud bot streams on AI tracks are designed purely to harvest royalties, which becomes a live threat to the economics everyone else depends on.

Recommendations

None of this points to AI simply replacing musicians, nor to it staying a background production tool. A third category is emerging AI-native "characters" with continuity, backstory and owned IP, closer to franchise properties than bands, which is exactly the model Eros and Hallwood Media are betting on. The deeper shift underneath it is economic: once the marginal cost of producing a new track approaches zero, the constraint on the industry stops being supplied and becomes attention. Whether AI-native artists become a durable category depends on questions still unresolved, training data legality chief among them, and on whether audiences keep listening once the novelty fades. Deezer's own research found 97% of listeners can't reliably distinguish AI from human music, yet 52% still believe fully AI-generated songs shouldn't sit on the same charts as human ones. Provenance matters even when perception can't detect it.

Conclusion

Scarcity in the age of AI will not be creative output but genuine human connection. As AI makes music production abundant and inexpensive, the qualities it cannot replicate authenticity, lived experience, artistic identity, and trust – become increasingly valuable. Audiences will continue to seek creators with compelling stories and meaningful live experiences. In an era of infinite synthetic content, originality is no longer the premium; credibility, human presence, and emotional connection are.

Sources

1. https://www.livemint.com/industry/media/ai-music-ai-native-artists-eros-music-worlds-eros-innovation-copyright-intellectual-property-music-industry-11785053693997.html
2. https://www.facebook.com/KJSIMofficial/posts/the-mint-featured-insights-from-dr-alka-agarwal-assistant-professor-general-mana/1375301184595168/
3. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/livemint_how-ai-brought-the-mahabharat-to-life-collective-activity-7389643662193999873-6BKG
4. https://musically.com/2026/07/02/ai-powered-platform-eros-music-worlds-is-turning-film-characters-into-virtual-singers/
5. https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/bollywood-t-series-saregama-sony-music-copyright-lawsuit-openai-delhi-hc-125021400876_1.html 

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Introduction

Social media platforms serve as an ideal breeding ground for cybercrime. A new fraud called ‘WhatsApp Pink’ has emerged, promising new features and an improved UI. Several law enforcement and government agencies have already issued severe caution against the program, which is used to hack mobile phones and steal personal information.

What is a pink WhatsApp Scam?

WhatsApp is on a roll with new features, but the messaging app is also experiencing an increase in a new type of scam. The WhatsApp Pink scam, as it is known, is gaining steam. Police and government organisations in several states, including Mumbai, Kerala, and Karnataka, have warned about the scam. A North Region cybercrime wing tweet warned, “WHATSAPP PINK – A Red Alert for Android Users.” The government’s cybersecurity organisations have warned about the rise in pink WhatsApp scams.

Scammers and hackers target WhatsApp users with fake messages via the network in this scam. According to reports, the message contains a link directing users to download WhatsApp Pink, a bogus messaging program. According to sources, scammers are targeting many people with the promise that the next version will have a better interface and additional features.

The application also steals critical financial information such as OTP, bank account information, and contact information. When people open the link, harmful software is installed on their mobile phones, and scammers get access to the phones. The user may even lose access to their phone by downloading the app.

According to the advisory

The news about ‘New Pink Look WhatsApp with extra features’ recently circulating among WhatsApp users is a hoax that can lead to hacking of your mobile through malicious software.” It is uncommon for fraudsters to devise new tricks and methods to entice naive consumers into falling into their trap and committing cyber fraud. It is the users’ responsibility to be Aware, Alert, and Attentive to these types of frauds in order to be safe and secure in the digital world.”

The link that is present in the message, according to a notice from the police, is a phishing effort. By clicking the link, the user runs the risk of having their device compromised, which might allow scammers to steal their device information or use it without their permission.

Users run the possibility of suffering negative outcomes if they click the Pink WhatsApp link, as the Mumbai Police have warned. These dangers include financial loss, identity theft, spam attacks, unauthorised access to contact information and saved images, and even total loss of control over mobile devices.

Guidelines against the Scam

• If a user has installed the fake WhatsApp, the authorities have instructed that they uninstall it immediately by going into the mobile settings, selecting WhatsApp with the pink logo in Apps, and then uninstalling it.
• Users have been advised to exercise caution when clicking links from untrustworthy websites unless they have previously verified their legitimacy. Users are advised to only download and update software from reliable sites such as the official Google Play Store, the iOS App Store, and so on.
• individuals using the site have been told not to send any links or communications to other persons until they have received proper authentication or verification.
• To avoid misuse, users are advised not to disclose any personal or financial information, including passwords, login information, and credit or debit card information, to anybody online. Furthermore, in order to defend themselves against fraud attempts, users are encouraged to stay up to date on the most recent news and changes in order to be informed and careful about cybercriminal activities.

Why do Scammer target WhatsApp

WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging service; it can reach out to considerably more prospective victims than it could with another tool. A scammer’s victims are almost certainly using WhatsApp. If all their victims are in one app, the criminal can easily handle their activities.

Conclusion

WhatsApp users may reduce their chances of being victims of the pink WhatsApp scam significantly by following the guidelines issued by the advisory. WhatsApp has become the primary target for scams, as there is a large number of the population using WhatsApp so it will be easy for the Scammer to steal critical personal information and target another victim through WhatsApp. The pink WhatsApp Scam is exactly like it.

Introduction

In an age where the lines between truth and fiction blur with an alarming regularity, we stand at the precipice of a new and dangerous era. Amidst the wealth of information that characterizes the digital age, deep fakes and disinformation rise like ghosts, haunting our shared reality. These manifestations of a technological revolution that promised enlightenment instead threaten the foundations upon which our societies are built: trust, truth, and collective understanding.

These digital doppelgängers, enabled by advanced artificial intelligence, and their deceitful companion—disinformation—are not mere ghosts in the machine. They are active agents of chaos, capable of undermining the core of democratic values, human rights, and even the safety of individuals who dare to question the status quo.

The Perils of False Narratives in the Digital Age

As a society, we often throw around terms such as 'fake news' with a mixture of disdain and a weary acceptance of their omnipresence. However, we must not understate their gravity. Misinformation and disinformation represent the vanguard of the digital duplicitous tide, a phenomenon growing more complex and dire each day. Misinformation, often spread without malicious intent but with no less damage, can be likened to a digital 'slip of the tongue' — an error in dissemination or interpretation. Disinformation, its darker counterpart, is born of deliberate intent to deceive, a calculated move in the chess game of information warfare.

Their arsenal is varied and ever-evolving: from misleading memes and misattributed quotations to wholesale fabrications in the form of bogus news sites and carefully crafted narratives. Among these weapons of deceit, deepfakes stand out for their audacity and the striking challenge they pose to the concept of seeing to believe. Through the unwelcome alchemy of algorithms, these video and audio forgeries place public figures, celebrities, and even everyday individuals into scenarios they never experienced, uttering words they never said.

The Human Cost: Threats to Rights and Liberties

The impact of this disinformation campaign transcends inconvenience or mere confusion; it strikes at the heart of human rights and civil liberties. It particularly festers at the crossroads of major democratic exercises, such as elections, where the right to a truthful, unmanipulated narrative is not just a political nicety but a fundamental human right, enshrined in Article 25 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

In moments of political change, whether during elections or pivotal referenda, the deliberate seeding of false narratives is a direct assault on the electorate's ability to make informed decisions. This subversion of truth infects the electoral process, rendering hollow the promise of democratic choice.

This era of computational propaganda has especially chilling implications for those at the frontline of accountability—journalists and human rights defenders. They find themselves targets of character assassinations and smear campaigns that not only put their safety at risk but also threaten to silence the crucial voices of dissent.

It should not be overlooked that the term 'fake news' has, paradoxically, been weaponized by governments and political entities against their detractors. In a perverse twist, this label becomes a tool to shut down legitimate debate and shield human rights violations from scrutiny, allowing for censorship and the suppression of opposition under the guise of combatting disinformation.

Deepening the societal schisms, a significant portion of this digital deceit traffic in hate speech. Its contents are laden with xenophobia, racism, and calls to violence, all given a megaphone through the anonymity and reach the internet so readily provides, feeding a cycle of intolerance and violence vastly disproportionate to that seen in traditional media.

Legislative and Technological Countermeasures: The Ongoing Struggle

The fight against this pervasive threat, as illustrated by recent actions and statements by the Indian government, is multifaceted. Notably, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar's commitment to safeguarding the Indian populace from the dangers of AI-generated misinformation signals an important step in the legislative and policy framework necessary to combat deepfakes.

Likewise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal experience with a deepfake video accentuates the urgency with which policymakers, technologists, and citizens alike must view this evolving threat. The disconcerting experience of actor Rashmika Mandanna serves as a sobering reminder of the individual harm these false narratives can inflict and reinforces the necessity of a robust response.

In their pursuit to negate these virtual apparitions, policymakers have explored various avenues ranging from legislative action to penalizing offenders and advancing digital watermarks. However, it is not merely in the realm of technology that solutions must be sought. Rather, the confrontation with deepfakes and disinformation is also a battle for the collective soul of societies across the globe.

As technological advancements continue to reshape the battleground, figures like Kris Gopalakrishnan and Manish Gangwar posit that only a mix of rigorous regulatory frameworks and savvy technological innovation can hold the front line against this rising tidal wave of digital distrust.

This narrative is not a dystopian vision of a distant future - it is the stark reality of our present. And as we navigate this new terrain, our best defenses are not just technological safeguards, but also the nurturing of an informed and critical citizenry. It is essential to foster media literacy, to temper the human inclination to accept narratives at face value and to embolden the values that encourage transparency and the robust exchange of ideas.

As we peer into the shadowy recesses of our increasingly digital existence, may we hold fast to our dedication to the truth, and in doing so, preserve the essence of our democratic societies. For at stake is not just a technological arms race, but the very quality of our democratic discourse and the universal human rights that give it credibility and strength.

Conclusion  

In this age of digital deceit, it is crucial to remember that the battle against deep fakes and disinformation is not just a technological one. It is also a battle for our collective consciousness, a battle to preserve the sanctity of truth in an era of falsehoods. As we navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the digital world, let us arm ourselves with the weapons of awareness, critical thinking, and a steadfast commitment to truth. In the end, it is not just about winning the battle against deep fakes and disinformation, but about preserving the very essence of our democratic societies and the human rights that underpin them.