Keir Starmer video calling some Savile claims ‘slightly frivolous’ is deepfake

A video circulating on social media appears to show the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, saying he thought some of the claims in the investigation into the paedophile Jimmy Savile were “slightly frivolous”.

However, this video is not genuine and its audio is likely to have been generated using artificial intelligence (AI).

The video shows a younger Mr Starmer talking to the camera. He appears to say he “obviously knew about the investigation into Jimmy Savile, but I thought at that time that there simply wasn’t the evidence [...] the testimony simply wasn’t compelling. Also Savile did have a great standing with people, and so the threshold for any action taken was always going to be higher, and some of the claims felt slightly frivolous. We felt the threshold wasn’t met at that time.”

It has been shared with the caption: “For those who haven’t seen it, this is Keir Starmer ADMITTING he knew about the investigation into Jimmy Savile but stopped it as he thought the claims were ‘frivolous’. Disgraceful that this man is our PM”.  

But the footage is actually a deepfake video and there is no evidence the audio is real. Deepfake content refers to original images, audio and videos created using artificial intelligence that can be used to convincingly imitate real people.

AI and digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley in the US Professor Hany Farid told Full Fact the video was a “lip-sync deepfake in which the voice was AI-generated and the original video was modified to make the mouth appear to be consistent with the new voice track”.

He added: “I’ve analyzed this video with several of our forensic tools and it finds clear evidence of AI-generation and voice/mouth desynchronization. In addition, you can visually see obvious inconsistencies in the mouth movement.”

The human rights nonprofit WITNESS’s Deepfakes Rapid Response Force also told Full Fact that its experts believe the video was AI-manipulated. 

It told us “there are elements indicating that the audio may be generated or modified by AI, [but] the evidence is not conclusive enough to state it with certainty”. 

Full Fact has found no other indication that the audio is real. 

The genuine video which seems to have been used to create the deepfake was posted by the Guardian in 2012 and has different audio. In the real video, Mr Starmer discusses social media prosecution guidelines, and makes no mention of Savile. 

A spokesperson for the Guardian told Full Fact that the video circulating on social media is a fake and was not published by the Guardian in this form. We have also contacted Number 10 about the fake video, and will update this article if we receive a response. 

The original video is higher resolution than the deepfake posted on social media, particularly around the mouth. Haziness around the lips and mouth area is a tell tale sign a video has been poorly lip synced. As Dr Dominic Lees, an Associate Professor in Filmmaking and convenor of the University of Reading’s Synthetic Media Research Network, previously told us when analysing a different video, deepfakes “find it very difficult to generate a natural look in the teeth so often leave this blurry and out-of-focus”.

We’ve fact checked multiple lip-sync videos in the past, including another of Mr Starmer that used genuine footage from his 2023 New Year address to make it look like he was promoting an investment scheme.

We have previously written about claims Mr Starmer stopped Jimmy Savile being charged in 2009. While Mr Starmer was head of the CPS when the decision was made not to prosecute Savile, he was not the reviewing lawyer for the case. An official investigation commissioned later by Mr Starmer criticised both prosecutors and police for their handling of the allegations.

Mr Starmer’s actions surrounding the Savile case appear to be re-emerging in light of the government’s decision to reject Oldham Council's request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation—saying the council should lead it instead. There has been a backlash against this decision, with the Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch calling for a full national public inquiry into the UK's “rape gangs scandal”.

The emergence of realistic deepfake material like this exposes the increased challenges of verification posed by new technology and the challenge of ensuring an effective and proportionate response by social media platforms on such content.

Misinformation spreads quickly online so it’s especially important to consider whether something is likely to be genuine before sharing.

We’ve written a guide on how to spot deepfake videos and AI audio which can help you identify content that has been edited or created to mislead online.