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Filipino physician and content creator Geraldine Zamora clarifies that she neither endorses nor sells any creams, medicines, or supplements
Claim: Filipino physician and content creator Geraldine Zamora is endorsing a cream made from bee venom that can cure arthritis.
Rating: FALSE
Why we fact-checked this: The Facebook video bearing the claim has gained 5.7 million views, 31,000 reactions, and 4,300 comments.
The video allegedly shows GMA Regional TV’s Balitanghali host Cris Zuñiga reporting that Zamora developed a bee venom cream to cure arthritis.
The video also shows some individuals supposedly vouching for the effectiveness of the said product.
According to the post, the product is being sold at half price with a buy-one-get-one offer. Several commenters on the post also claimed that the product helped ease their joint pains.
The facts: The news report claiming Zamora developed and endorsed the bee venom cream is AI-manipulated.
An analysis using the deepfake detection tool Sensity classified the video as “suspicious” with a 99% confidence level. The altered video shows unnatural mouth movements of Zamora, Zuñiga, and others, indicating a lip-sync manipulation.
“High confidence indicates that the detector has found definite signals of AI generation or manipulation. Minimum confidence for this detector is 50%,” Sensity noted.
Zamora clarified on Monday, September 23, that she neither endorses nor sells any bee venom creams, medicines, or supplements.
She emphasized that endorsing medical products is unethical according to the Philippine Medical Association’s Code of Ethics.
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Unrelated video: The manipulated footage of Zamora was taken from her TikTok post on June 27, 2023. In the original clip, Zamora was addressing a follower’s question about the financial rewards of being a doctor. There was no mention of bone or joint therapy in the original video.
The deepfake video promoting the cream also used a video clip from the ABS-CBN medical show Salamat Dok featuring former school principal Loreta Lee. However, in the original video from September 29, 2019, Lee never mentioned using bee venom cream as a treatment for osteoarthritis.
Similar claims: Rappler had debunked a similar claim that used manipulated clips of Zamora and football player Cristiano Ronaldo. Another ad also used a clip of Zamora and two videos from GMA’s Pinoy MD health program to endorse a fake gout cure.
AI-manipulated videos used to falsely imply the endorsement of celebrities and public figures have surged in recent months, particularly to promote various supposed health-related products not registered with the Philippine Food and Drug Administration. – James Patrick Cruz/Rappler.com
