Artificial Intelligence

Is a video showing a Somali man in court asking to be deported instead of having to serve a 30-year prison sentence for daycare fraud real? No, that's not true: The short clip was created by an artificial intelligence tool, according to an AI-generated content detector. The account that first posted the video is filled with similar AI slop and…

Did your favorite sports star "shock fans" or "shake" the league by "publicly" or "flatly" refusing to wear an LGBT Rainbow Armband because it would turn the game "into a political circus"? No, that's not true: The claim was made about at least 95 football, soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey players in posts published on dozens of fake Facebook fan…

Did Travis Kelce, Jelly Roll, Bruce Springsteen, Caitlin Clark and a 12 other celebrities say that President Trump was "a vicious old bastard draining America's soul after the Born-in-America Act"? No, that's not true: The claim that at least 17 different sports stars and entertainers made that identical statement was made up by a Vietnamese-based spam factory that uses artificial…

Did President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan quietly drive themselves to a Virginia nursing home to serve breakfast to elderly residents on Christmas Day 1983? No, that's not true: This is a completely made-up story that is contradicted by historical records, including President Reagan's personal diary entry for that date. It was published by a Pakistani-based spam factory…

Did Keanu Reeves open an "Arch Animal Sanctuary" as claimed by several viral posts? No, that's not true: The image used in the story was generated using artificial intelligence according to the SynthID watermark in it. There were no actual news reports about such a sanctuary being opened. One image used in the viral story was stolen from a fact…

Does a video show real footage of a U.K. member of Parliament asking why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been captured the same way the United States captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela? No, that's not true: The clip was generated using artificial intelligence. Early versions of the video included a watermark indicating a specific generative AI tool. There…

False claims about the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Jeffrey Epstein files, and purported verbal gaffes by President Trump topped the list of most-read Lead Stories fact checks in 2025. Here are our most read fact checks of the past year, reflecting our reader's interest in finding out the truth about various viral stories. If you see something suspicious in 2026,…

Did BMW launch a motorized unicycle at the 2026 Tech Expo? No, that's not true: The AI-generated video was published by a channel with a disclaimer that they "explore the future of technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics." This same channel has published similar AI-generated videos showcasing one-wheel vehicles that purportedly came from Honda, Ferrari, Ducati, and Tesla. Searches for press…

Is a photo showing Melania Trump kissing Jeffrey Epstein on the lips real? No, that's not true: The Hive Moderation AI detection tool was conclusive that the image was created by an artificial intelligence tool, rating it at 98.8 percent certainty. Online searches found no examples of the image earlier than one shared in an X post on December 17,…

Does actual drone footage show a giant "eclipse Octopus" in the Gulf of America (sometimes also called the Gulf of Mexico)? No, that's not true: The video originated on a TikTok channel with a disclaimer that says it publishes videos made with artificial intelligence tools and which posted many other faked animal videos. The "octopus" in the video also had…