Portugal’s Strange World Cup of Deepfakes, Fake Quotes and Death Threats
An AI casino advert, a doctored screenshot and a fabricated Zlatan quote turned the favourites' group stage into a study in football's disinformation age.
Portugal arrived among the favourites to win the World Cup.
But on 17 June, the day they opened against DR Congo, the investigative magazine Josimar published a fifty-second video that appeared to show Bruno Fernandes signing as a brand ambassador for QH88, an illegal Vietnamese gambling operator.
None of it had happened.
A frame-by-frame analysis commissioned by Josimar found that the clip was an AI-generated deepfake. Fernandes had agreed to nothing.
The video used the captain of Manchester United to lead punters most to a banned betting site.
It was the most polished example of a world of online disinformation that has dogged Portugal.
During the World Cup, after Cristiano Ronaldo put in a poor performance against DR Congo, a forged screenshot showed a demand from João Neves’ partner, the actress Madalena Aragão, that Ronaldo should retire. It was convincing enough to draw a public reply from Ronaldo’s fiancée before it was dismissed.
An ambiguous quote from Neves about Ronaldo was rewritten online into a dressing-room mutiny the players spent days denying.
