Australian media organisation, SBS News, has consulted several experts on the sex clips implicating Economic Affairs Minister Azmin Ali.
The report stated that although unable to confirm if the person in the video is indeed Azmin, the experts, however, agreed that there appeared to be no digital alteration.
"If it's a deepfake, it's a very good one," said one of them, Kevin Nguyen.
According to SBS, Nguyen is a digital forensics expert who previously consulted and provided content verification for the BBC and the New York Times, and now works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Following his analysis of the three clips, Nguyen said: "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."
Drawing a similar conclusion was Professor Siwei Lyu from the Colleague of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Albany in the US.
"Barring the compression artifacts, there are no definite trace of deepfake algorithms, such as inconsistent face orientations, or 'floating' of faces," he said.
SBS, which is a state-funded news outlet, described Siwei as an expert in deep learning and media forensics.
However, another expert Giorgio Patrini, CEO of Australian company Deeptrace, said the quality of the videos was too low for a conclusive analysis.
Patrini's firm deals with authenticating deepfake videos.
"None of the analysts could confirm that Mr Azmin is the man in the video, they only concluded the video appears to not have been digitally altered," read the report.
Red flags
Meanwhile, another expert, University of Technology Sydney's Denby Weller, said there were certain "red flags".
"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.
Weller had trained in video verification with the Google News Initiative.
Azmin, who is also PKR deputy president, had described the videos, which were leaked by unknown individuals via WhatsApp, as a nefarious plot to ruin his political career.
This is after Santubong PKR Youth chief Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz confirmed to be the other man in the video indulging in sexual acts with the person resembling Azmin.
Haziq, who is being investigated for multiple offences, including carnal intercourse, also claimed that the man with him was Azmin and that the incident took place in the latter's hotel room in Sandakan last month.
The police are in the process of determining if the clips are authentic.
Malaysiakini is contacting Azmin and his aides for comment on the SBS report. - Mkini
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