Fact-check: Viral French president video on Rafale market loss is fabricated
Hive Moderation, an AI-content detection platform, analyzed the clip and assigned the audio an aggregated score of 85.3%, indicating it is likely AI-generated
Updated Wednesday Mar 04 2026
A video circulating online claims to show French President Emmanuel Macron saying that France has already lost billions of dollars in the Rafale fighter jet market due to the inefficiency of the Indian Air Force during its conflict with Pakistan in May last year.
The claim is false. France's president did not make any such remarks.
Claim
On February 18, a user on X (formerly Twitter) shared a 43-second clip of French President Emmanuel Macron speaking during his address at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Summit in New Delhi, India.
The video was captioned: “Emmanuel Macron spills the beans at the India AI Summit: "We have already lost a billion dollars in the Rafale market due to the inefficiency of the Indian Air Force. We cannot be part of any failed organisation that would further tarnish our name."
At the time of writing, the video had been viewed more than 200,000 times, liked nearly 600 times, and reposted more than 2,000 times.
Fact
President Emmanuel Macron did not make any remarks about losing a billion dollars after Pakistan allegedly downed a Rafale, a French-made fighter jet, during the May 2025 conflict with India.
Geo Fact Check reviewed the full speech delivered by the French president at the summit on February 19, as published on France 24 English’s official YouTube channel. In the 14-minute address, Macron makes no reference to Rafale fighter jets, India’s air force performance, or last year's conflict.
The full speech can be viewed here.
Additionally, Hive Moderation, an AI-content detection platform, analysed the clip and assigned the audio an aggregated score of 85.3%, indicating it is likely AI-generated.
Geo Fact Check also ran the clip through the DeepFake-O-Meter tool developed by the University at Buffalo, which assessed the video as 99.7% likely to be AI-generated.
Verdict: Emmanuel Macron did not make the claimed remarks. The viral clip is highly likely to be AI-generated and does not match his official speech from the AI Impact Summit.
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