Did Fox News broadcast a segment about online influencer MrBeast starting his own online casino "where everyone wins"? No, that's not true: The video contained signs of digital manipulation, and an AI-detection tool further confirmed that the segment was not authentic. A Fox News spokesperson denied that the network aired such a segment. Lead Stories found no traces of the video on the channel's website.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on August 10, 2024. In the video, a host appeared to be saying this:
The richest man on the internet, who has paid the bills of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, decided to open his own online casino where everyone wins. In one of his videos, he showed us his safe, which stores funds for all players of his own online casino.
In the final seconds, the same host seemed to endorse that online casino app and encourage people to follow a link:
Thank you very much, MrBeast, I'll try your game. Beware of fakes, download the original application at the link below the video.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Aug 15 14:11:09 2024 UTC)
The 56-second video purported to show an authentic segment of Fox News host Laura Ingraham's show "Angle" (archived here) about Jimmy Donaldson. Better known to online audiences by his nickname MrBeast, Donaldson is a YouTuber, in his mid-20s as of this writing, who previously was reported to have made millions from his videos (archived here).
However, the video that is the focus of this fact check wasn't broadcast by Fox News.
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed to Lead Stories via email on August 15, 2024:
... this never aired on FOX News Channel.
A Google search across the Fox News website for the keywords seen here (archived here) showed that although the network did cover MrBeast on several occasions, none of those reports promoted an online casino "where everyone wins."
A close examination of the video showed that the host's lips were out of sync with the audio at times (for example, at the nine-second mark).
The graphic elements in the top left corner of the screen also seemed to be off: The font's size and style do not match the lower banner. In reality, the breaking news alert on Fox News would be displayed in the top part of that lower banner, not in the top left corner, as seen, for example, here (archived here).
According to the TrueMedia AI-detection tool (currently in beta testing), there was substantial evidence (archived here) that both the audio and the faces of the people in the video were digitally altered by artificial intelligence.
(Source: True Media screenshot taken on Thu Aug 15 17:51:10 2024 UTC)
The earliest appearance of the video found by Lead Stories dated July 11, 2024, when it was published on Instagram (archived here) by an account not formally affiliated with Fox News.
The Facebook page that republished it on August 10, 2024, ran the video as an ad (archived here), though it was not labeled as one.
A link attached to the video led to a website offering to download a number puzzle with a description -- incongruously in Russian -- saying it was a game "you never played before."
Other Lead Stories fact checks about entertainment are here. Stories about technology are here.
