Imran says 'companies running smear campaign' against him.

KARACHI -- PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has claimed that his opponents have hired companies that are 'preparing material' for his character assassination.

He said this while talking to actor Shaan Shahid during an interview on Hum News on Wednesday.

Mr Khan's remarks come as PTI-linked social media accounts have warned supporters of the dangers of 'deepfakes', videos which use a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to create life-like but fake videos of people.

Separately, while speaking on a podcast, he claimed that his former allies, Jahangir Tareen and Aleem Khan, expected him to do what the Sharifs used to do, i.e. to legalise all their illegal activities after coming into power.

'This is where we developed differences,' he said, adding that looking at where they had ended up now (in the PML-N camp), it was obvious that they had no problems with corruption, the PTI chief told a trio of interviewers during the podcast.

'I had to face mafias, the biggest of which is the Sharif mafia [...] they always attack on a personal level because [...] are indulging in corruption for the past 35 years. When someone [points out] their corruption, they attack a person's character,' Mr Khan said during his interview with Shaan Shahid.

He said his ex-wife Jemima Goldsmith was also targeted in the past and a campaign was run against her accusing her of being part of the 'Jewish lobby'. A false case was also filed against her accusing her of exporting antique tiles from the country, a Dawn.com report quoted the former PM as having said during the interview.

Mr Khan said the Sharifs had made preparations to launch a character assassination drive against him after Eid. 'Now that Eid is over, you will see they are fully prepared for my character assassination. They have hired...