The scene lands on the phone looking like a scoop: Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and now a candidate for Brazil's presidency, standing before a row of microphones with his wife, Fernanda Bolsonaro, at his side, announcing that if elected he will take away "the pension that many retirees receive without need," make "a drastic cut" to the 13th salary, the extra month's pay guaranteed to formal workers in Brazil, and scrap the Pé de Meia school savings program. The video began circulating on Wednesday (7) on Instagram, TikTok, X and WhatsApp, in the tense stretch between the two rounds of the presidential election. It is fake. A fact-check by Fato ou Fake, the verification team of the news portal G1, published on Thursday (8), concluded that the speech was fabricated with artificial intelligence and synced to the candidate's lip movements.
According to G1, the authors of the montage used as a base a real interview Flávio gave on Sunday night (4), right after first-round results came in. In the original recording, the candidate thanks voters: "I am very happy, truly, with the result we had here. Almost 56 million Brazilian men and women gave this vote of confidence for change." In the doctored version, the thank-you turns into a threat to workers' pockets, ending with a "Victory is ours" the senator never said in that context.
Detectors flag synthetic audio
To confirm the fraud, Fato ou Fake ran the material through two detection tools. Hive Moderation found an 83.1% probability that the audio had been manipulated with AI, while Hiya/InVID put the chance of an artificially generated voice at 99%. Contacted by G1, Flávio Bolsonaro's press office called it an "evident AI montage" and released a statement:
"The evident AI montage is electoral fake news, which is a crime in Brazil. One more criminal attempt by the PT network to fool the people. Flávio Bolsonaro has made it clear, countless times, that he will not cut costs at the expense of those who need it most. The 13th salary, pensions and all labor rights set out in the Federal Constitution are unquestionable and will be protected."
G1 did not attribute authorship of the fake video, and the campaign's accusation against the "PT network" appears only in the candidate's statement. What the official numbers show is the backdrop against which the piece spread: Flávio took 47.03% of valid votes in the first round, ahead of President Lula (PT), who had 45.16%, and the two face each other in a runoff on October 25.
A week of montages
It was the second time in a matter of days that Fato ou Fake debunked an AI-manipulated video of Flávio Bolsonaro. Before this one, a doctored version of footage about the senator's visit to the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem circulated, turned into a statement that workers would have to choose between rights and jobs; the candidate's press office confirmed to G1 that the content was a montage. The Santa Catarina-based portal ND Mais also documented this week a wave of rumors against the candidate, with false claims that he would privatize the SUS public health system, end the Bolsa Família cash-transfer and Farmácia Popular drug programs, and sell off Petrobras, Banco do Brasil and Caixa. The economic coordinator of his government plan, Adolfo Sachsida, denied the privatizations in a video posted on X: "There will be no privatizations of companies. None of these companies will be touched."
Back in the WhatsApp group where the video still travels from screen to screen, the scene remains the same: the candidate ringed by microphones, his wife beside him, the voice promising cuts. The image is real, recorded on Sunday night. The voice, the detection tools confirm, never came out of his mouth.