Imagine scrolling through YouTube at midnight and encountering a split screen featuring Sheikh Hasina on one side and Jamaat Ameer Dr Shafiqur Rahman on the other, with a title promising a face-to-face clash on Khaled Muhiuddin’s talk show.
More than 352,000 viewers watched it, and thousands argued in the comments as if they had witnessed live television. They had not, as no studio, no host, and no debate ever existed.
A second, even bolder video featured a caption claiming that Hasanul Haq Inu was speaking live immediately after leaving jail while Prime Minister Tarique Rahman listened. In reality, editors arranged old footage to mimic a real-time exchange, and Inu has remained in custody since 2024.
Both clips are cheapfakes: they contain no artificial intelligence, relying instead on cutting, a split screen, and the borrowed look of a trusted program.
Neither case is an accident. A recent study by FactWatch identified approximately 300 similar items and subsequently examined several platforms.
According to findings, the YouTube channel Rajnoitik Studio and the Facebook page Bangla News240 collectively published more than 300 fabricated shows that accumulated roughly 517K followers.
The fabricated broadcasts typically target sensitive political topics, elections, or public controversies to shape public opinion or push partisan agendas. The casting is telling, as fabricated statements and deepfakes regularly target key political leadership.
The talk-show format succeeds because a studio duel compresses complex politics into an accessible contest, while the host provides borrowed authority. Furthermore, a reel removes the underlying channel, presenting viewers with an isolated clip rather than its original source. People struggle the most when fake content adopts a news format.
By combining psychological manipulation with media impersonation, these AI-generated “talk shows” and deepfakes weaponize local cultural sensitivities to shift public opinion. While a single deepfake is easy to ignore, hundreds of them create an illusion of reality.
When viewers scroll through feeds and see multiple users echoing the exact same political talking point, they begin to believe that the entire country feels that way.
One fake show persuades a few people; a hundred of them feel like a national mood.
Prof Sumon Rahman, the founding editor of FactWatch, has warned that confirmation bias and timing have the potential to confuse even media-literate viewers.
Describing the practice as a tactic of manufactured majoritarianism, a report reveals that nearly 30,000 fake reactions were purchased from four click farms at a cost of roughly Tk 120 to 200 per thousand, with some arriving within minutes. A review of 263 posts counted 885,811 reactions, 62 percent of which were “haha,” with at least 19,708 coming from bot-like profiles.
A study titled “How artificial intelligence and synthetic reality shaped Bangladesh’s 2026 election” concluded that coordinated narrative manipulation had become a structural feature. The research noted that this was introduced during Bangladesh’s first AI-saturated election, an event marked by a reality where seeing was no longer believing.
The click-farm probe revealed no single mastermind in the record, finding instead that several actors overlap. The investigation identified politically aligned clusters moving in tandem, though it did not examine official party links. Meanwhile, the administrators of the talk-show channels never answered the questions.
Some operators function independently. According to Anthropic’s September threat report, as relayed by bdnews24, an operator in Gaibandha rotated 29 artificial intelligence accounts over a period of approximately 16 months, generating about 1,500 fake headlines. The company discovered no evidence indicating that the Awami League operated or financed the network.
FactWatch exposed a counterfeit Prothom Alo page with an invented interview with Abdullah Abu Sayeed that steered readers toward a trading platform; meanwhile, the Daily Star documented 52 deepfake videos and 31 pages offering fake Family Cards for likes.
Consequently, “who” is less a mastermind than a marketplace.
FactWatch’s data offers a before‑and‑after picture in its 2024 election study.
Video accounted for 71.9% of 157 unique hoaxes, while only three, or 1.9%, were deepfakes.
By 2026, another analysis of 72 AI-manipulated cases found that 49% invented what leaders did or said, and 28% used AI-edited photocards to fake quotes.
After Osman Hadi was shot on December 12, 2025, fact-checkers documented within two days fake photocards in the names of RTV, Kalbela, BBC Bangla, and Amar Desh, an AI image of a suspect, and an AI clip in which a hand grips a man yet belongs to no one.
A widely shared photograph of Shadik Kayem with the suspect was synthetic, yet BNP’s Ruhul Kabir Rizvi cited it at a rally and later apologized.
For years, the standard advice has been to tell citizens to verify before sharing. That advice is sound, yet it is unfair on its own. A viewer on a bus, with a phone and little data, cannot reverse-search a split screen.
After the Cyber Security Act of April 2026, draft amendments would force platforms to remove harmful AI content, and Transparency International Bangladesh and other rights groups fear a return to Digital Security Act-style repression.
A vague takedown power is easily aimed at critics, and real journalism can also be dismissed as fake. Any rule should therefore target fraud, impersonation, and paid fake engagement, with judicial review and public reporting, rather than “misinformation” in general.
Broadcasters and newsrooms have a duty. Every outlet whose face or microphone is borrowed should publish a quick, searchable “this is not ours” notice, and should consider visible watermarks on original clips.
The click-farm evidence shows that candidates from several parties share the same bot pool. A public pledge never to buy engagement, never to circulate unverified cards, and to apologize quickly when fooled would cost nothing. Rizvi’s apology was a start; it should become a norm.
The broadcast finally returned to that midnight scroll.
The harm of a fake talk show is not merely that someone believes a debate occurred.
Political factions in Bangladesh do not just create fake videos for entertainment; they use them to manufacture deliberate, high-stakes narratives.
A falsehood once believed does not stay online. It walks into real politics.
A studio that never existed can cost a few hours and a laptop. Rebuilding trust in real ones will cost far more.
Zulker Naeen is a Research Coordinator, Centre for Critical and Qualitative Studies (CQS) and Adjunct Faculty, Department of Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). Views expressed are the writer’s own.
Why it matters
The widespread circulation of cheapfakes and manipulated media directly distorts political discourse and manufactures false national narratives in Bangladesh.