EXPERTS who studied a series of raunchy videos of two men in bed together, which have been linked to a Malaysian minister, said the clips did not appear to have been doctored, SBS News reports.

The Australian media company said it consulted several digital forensics experts on the authenticity of the videos, and the consensus was that the clips did not show signs of digitall alterations.

The experts were unable, however, to determine the identity of the two men in the videos, one of whom is said to be Economics Affairs Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali.

Azmin has denied it is him in the videos.

Kevin Nguyen, a digital forensics expert who has verified digital content for the BBC and the New York Times, was called to analyse three of the clips.

“At an image level, forensically it checks out. I ran a number of forensic analysis … across the three videos and at the six points I checked there was no evidence of photo or image manipulation.”

Nguyen said it was possible the videos were manufactured using the fairly new “deepfake” technology.

“If it’s a deepfake, it’s a very good one.”

Giorgio Patrini, who heads Deeptrace, an Australian specialist in deepfake technology, said the video resolution was too low for a conclusive analysis.

Denby Weller, from the University of Technology Sydney, told SBS News the videos appeared to have been shot on a phone.

“It’s been shot in portrait mode on a phone by the looks of it, although that look can be artificially created in post-production. It has also been shot from a slightly elevated position (the height of the camera is very hard to fake), which would indicate that the phone was pointing slightly downwards at the men,” she said.

All three agreed it was impossible to positively identity the two men.

All three agreed it was impossible to positively identity the two men.

Meanwhile, the videos, which have gone viral, are the subject of a police investigation.

Santubong PKR Youth chief Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz who confessed to being one of the men in the videos and said Azmin was the other man, was recently arrested for the offences of carnal intercourse against the law of nature and distributing pornographic materials, among others. He has since been released.

His PKR colleague, Azmin has disavowed their so-called sexual encounters, saying he barely knows the man, who is a recent party addition in Sarawak. – June 17, 2019.