Experts are pushing back on claims that artificial intelligence was used in President Donald Trump’s Wednesday evening address on the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In a post on LinkedIn on Thursday, Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley, professor and co-founder of the deepfake detection company GetReal Security, said an analysis of the footage yielded no evidence of AI manipulation.
Allegations of AI use came shortly after Trump’s Oval Office remarks were shared to numerous official accounts on social media, including the White House’s X profile and the president’s page on Truth Social.
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An apparent glitch in the footage and momentary distortions on one of the president’s fingers were quickly claimed as evidence of digital alterations. Social media posts promoting the AI theory have received millions of views and shares.
Farid, however, says a review of the footage by his company found “no evidence that the audio or video is AI-generated.”
“Our audio analysis find(s) no evidence that the voice is AI-generated, and our video analysis finds no inconsistencies between Trump’s mouth movement and his voice as you might expect to see in a lip-sync or avatar deepfake,” he said.
‘Localized video manipulation’
Farid did say that there seemed to be “some localized video manipulation” when Trump’s right hand appears distorted at around 19 seconds into the clip.
Filmmaker and creative technologist Albert Bozesan believes the distortion was caused by a “morph cut effect.”
“It’s something video editors do to splice together two different takes,” Bozesan said. “Usually it’s seamless, unless there’s a lot of movement between takes. It basically mistook one finger for another in this case.”
In his remarks on Kirk’s death, Trump placed blame on the “radical left” and referred to an unspecified crackdown on “organizations” accused of fomenting political violence.
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed while speaking with a crowd at Utah Valley University as part of his American Comeback Tour.
