AI-Manipulated Video of Trump Banning Tesla Production in the US Viral as Real
Trump didn't announce a ban on Tesla production. The video was manipulated using AI.
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A video of United States of America (USA)'s President Donald Trump announcing a ban on the production of Elon Musk-owned Tesla motors in the US, "effective immediately" after the two had a public, online spat.
What does he say?: He says that the decision came because, "Elon stabbed me in the back a couple of days ago and went crazy on his platform X lying about my involvement in the Epstein files, so I can't have that snake Elon making money in this country while I'm the president."
In the video, Trump calls Teslas "junk cars" that only "nerds" like, adding that he only bought one "to show my support for Elon" because he needed the latter's support in the 2024 US Presidential elections.
We also received a query to verify this video on our WhatsApp tipline.
(Archived versions of more posts sharing this video can be seen here, here, here, and here.)
But...?: Trump has not announced a ban on Tesla production in the US. The video has been manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
How do we know?: We began by carrying out a search using the keywords 'trump bans tesla in us' to look for more information.
We came across a report by USA Today, which quoted a White House official saying that "Trump no longer wants the Tesla Model S" that he had bought to show support for Tesla and Musk.
However, no credible report mentioned Trump banning the production of Teslas in the country.
Since there were no reliable sources sharing this information, we submitted the video to AI-generated content detectors.
Hive Moderation's tool showed a 99.8 percent certainty of the video being "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content," giving the audio in the clip a higher score than the video element.
Hive Moderation said that the video was manipulated using AI.
(Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)
Similarly, Bengaluru-based startup Contrails.ai's tool also noted that it had detected manipulation in both audio and video elements.
Their report elaborated that in the video, the "lip and head movement appears to be animated and unnatural."
For the audio part of the clip, it noted that though the voice sounded very similar to Trump's actual voice, "the tone is slightly monotonous and the pacing is unnatural at certain parts," noting that that it was "most likely an advanced voice cloning/conversion attack."
Their tool also said that the video had been manipulated.
(Source: Contrails.ai/Screenshot)
Conclusion: An AI-manipulated video went viral with the false claim that US President Donald Trump announced a ban of Tesla production in the US after an online spat with Elon Musk.
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