Facebook says it will not take action to stop the spread of a manipulated “deepfake” video in which chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appears to talk about using stolen data to control people’s secrets, lives and futures.

The Instagram video, created by a British art group called Spectre, is being seen as a way to test Facebook’s new fake video policies.

Facebook is Instagram’s parent company.

“Imagine this for a second,” says the Mr Zuckerberg of the video.

“One man, with total control over billions of people’s stolen data. All their secrets, their lives, their futures. I owe it all to Spectre.

“Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future.”

The video, created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe, takes a news clip originally aired in 2017, where Mr Zuckerberg spoke about Russian interference on the 2016 election, and overlays it with custom audio.

It has racked up more than 60,000 views on Instagram, where it was uploaded on June 7.

“We will treat this content the same way we treat all misinformation on Instagram,” a spokesman for Facebook said.

“If third-party fact-checkers mark it as false, we will filter it from Instagram’s recommendation surfaces like Explore and hashtag pages.”

Spectre has also created deepfakes of Donald Trump, Freddie Mercury and Kim Kardashian, among others.

Facebook came under fire in May for refusing to remove fake videos of top US Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

One video was edited to make it sound like Ms Pelosi was slurring her words as she described a tense meeting with Mr Trump.

Versions of the doctored video spread widely across social media, even being shared by Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani in a since-deleted tweet.

Commenters on Facebook accused Ms Pelosi of being “drunk”, a “babbling mess” and possibly under the influence of drugs.

A Facebook spokesperson told the ABC the Pelosi video was not being removed. However, steps were taken to stop it from spreading.

“In this particular case, this video was eligible for fact-checking and sent to one of our third-party fact-checking partners who rated it as ‘false’,” the spokesperson said.

“As a result, the content has been significantly demoted in News Feed.”

Mr Trump himself shared a doctored video showing Ms Pelosi appearing to stammer.