The leaked video accusing President Nikos Christodoulides of corruption through unofficial donation flows shows no signs of being AI-generated, but was posted from a dubious X account, the fact-checking organisation Fact Check Cyprus said on Friday.

“We have strong evidence that there are no AI components in the video,” fact checker Theophile Bloudanis told the Cyprus Mail.

He said that the filmed sequences involving political figures – including former minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis, the president’s chief of staff and brother-in-law Charalambos Charalambous, and Cyfield CEO Giorgos Chrysochos – are almost certainly authentic.

“With all the information we have gathered so far, we are almost 100 per cent certain that there is no AI involved,” Bloudanis said.

While noting that detecting AI-generated content is becoming increasingly difficult, he said the video had been analysed using Hive Moderation and InVID-WeVerify, tools widely used by established fact-checking organisations.

“As a fact checker you can see it with your own eyes, these are seemingly real persons,” Bloudanis told the Cyprus Mail, careful to emphasise that the use of the term “seemingly” was a matter of professionalism, rather than means to undermine the credibility of the video.

He added that the organisation analysed both the full video and individual segments separately. “We conducted a double verification. Analysing a video as a whole can sometimes lead to errors, which is why we ran a second check,” he said, confirming the same conclusion.

However, Fact Check Cyprus raised concerns about the credibility of the X account, EmilyTanalyst, from which the video was first circulated. The account uses a Ukrainian flag as a profile picture and provides no verifiable information about its owner.

In the account’s bio, the user describes themselves as an “independent researcher, analyst and lecturer focused mainly on American domestic and foreign policies.”

Fact Check Cyprus found that the account name is linked to several online articles using the same description and an AI-generated profile image of a young woman.

Bloudanis said that many of these articles had been reposted by the X account in question, suggesting a likely connection.

“It’s not a very good sign if a profile is using AI generated pictures in content that is meant to be shared,” he said, “in this case it’s not very credible, it’s suspicious in a fact checking way, it doesn’t mean that there is a real person behind it.”

Asked whether the account’s blue verification tick enhanced its credibility, Bloudanis said it did not. “Unfortunately, verification on X does not mean much anymore, as anyone can buy it,” he said.

Bloudanis said that efforts are underway to find out more about the account and who is behind it, as well as the content of the video.

This could provide more background information on the circumstances and period in which the conversations were recorded, as this currently remains unclear, fueling suspicions on the intentions of whoever is behind its circulation.

“We’re still trying to find more information about the origins about the account and the content of the video

X’s blue verification check was in the past a kind of indicator of credibility of accounts of public figures or institutions, which had to officially apply to have their accounts featuring a batch and would get the latter without paying a fee.

Fact Check Cyprus responded quickly to the video’s appearance on Thursday, publishing a detailed analysis on its website. While ruling out AI manipulation, the organisation stressed that this does not automatically make the video credible.

“At this stage, it has not been possible to determine whether the video has been edited or presented out of context, or whether certain clips have been partially or in a specific direction,” it said, noting that a full evaluation is impossible without access to the complete audiovisual material and information about the recording conditions.