A FAKE AUDIO recording of British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay praising Irish anti-migrant protesters and saying they should vote out local politicians has spread widely online despite being fabricated.
A spokesperson for Ramsay confirmed to The Journal that the recording is not genuine, and the audio has some tell-tale signs of being generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“This movement will grow like the water protests did years ago, into a national movement,” the suspiciously stilted voice of Gordon Ramsay says about anti-immigration protests in the 70-second clip.
“People powder [sic] will stop this reckless open-borders migration policy, and it will also remove that traitorous, criminal government from power,” the clip continues.
“Do not be fooled by local councillors joining these protests. They’re only thinking of the upcoming local elections. Don’t be fooled. Get them all out.”
One such version of the video was shared on Twitter/X.com by an account that regularly posts racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT+ content, as well as claims that vaccines are a “bio weapon”. This post has been viewed more than 267,000 times, according to Twitter’s engagement figures.
However, that video appears to have been taken from a TikTok account that regularly posts anti-migrant and pro-Donald Trump content with more than 23,600 followers. That version of the video has been viewed more than 76,600 times, according to figures on TikTok.
However, the audio is “a fake”, a spokesperson for Gordon Ramsay confirmed. There are also reasons to think that the clip was an AI-generated “clone” of Ramsay’s voice, including unusual stresses and pauses in his speech as well as mispronunciations.
“People powder”, the voice says at one point, apparently working from a typo in the input text.
AI-generated voices of real people are sometimes called audio deepfakes and are a growing concern as they have become more convincing.
Cloned voices have already been successfully used in scams, including one that saw tens of millions of US dollars transferred from a company to scammers.
A cloned voice of US President Biden was also used in a “robocall”, in which people answered their phones to hear a recorded message.
“What a bunch of malarkey,” the recipient heard in what sounded like Biden’s voice, before it went on to encourage them not to vote in the New Hampshire primary.
Ramsay has also been the subject of previous audio deepfakes,and appears as a preset voice on AI voice generator websites.
Examples of AI-generated Gordon Ramsay voices are also available on YouTube, including fake endorsements for pet food and raw food diets, as well as the worst rap song I hope you ever hear.
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