Paris: Following a televised speech in which he attempted to defuse tensions over his unpopular pension reforms, a video of French President Emmanuel Macron singing a traditional song in the street surfaced on Tuesday.

When the video first surfaced, many Internet users believed it was artificial intelligence (AI) or some other type of hoax, but Macron's confidantes told AFP it was real.

"After his speech (on Monday evening), the president took a moment with his wife, Brigitte Macron. When they came across a group of young people singing, he joined them in singing a song from the Pyrenees that he is familiar with and loves, they claimed.

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The song "Le Refuge," which is about a lodge in a mountain range on France's southwest border with Spain, is featured in the nighttime video, where Macron can be seen reading the lyrics from his phone while being surrounded by men in their 20s and 30s who are loudly singing.

The president, whose reforms, which include raising the pension age, have caused him to face intense criticism lately, may have initially welcomed the incident as a sign of his willingness to connect with voters.

The video, however, was initially posted on the Facebook page of a group called "Projet Canto."

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The organisation claims to be preserving traditional songs in digital form, but the left-leaning newspaper Liberation revealed last year that it was founded and run by far-right activists and that its app contained recordings of songs with connections to Nazi Germany.

In the moment, Macron "could not have known the backgrounds of every person he was speaking to," the member of his entourage claimed.

The group claimed to have "far-left" songs in its library when it told Liberation last year that "political songs are part of the history of song, that's why we've stored them."

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Prior to this, in 2022, Macron performed "Le Refuge" while touring the Upper Pyrenees.