STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Does a video clip going viral on social media show Vice President Kamala Harris intoxicated while speaking about being "a joyful warrior"? No, that's not true: In the original video Harris can be heard speaking normally. Multiple AI detection tools found there was a high likelihood that this clip has been manipulated. The video was altered to make Harris sound drunk by slowing it down.
The claim appeared in a post on X on October 19, 2024 (archived here). The caption read:
Holy Fck!! What a pathetic mess!!
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Oct 21 13:31:10 2024 UTC)
The 30-second clip shows Harris giving advice on not letting others "take your joy" and how she calls herself "a joyful warrior." She is speaking slowly and, when coupled with the post's caption, it is implied that Harris is intoxicated.
The X post provides no additional pieces of evidence that would confirm the claim.
"U.S. Embassy in the Philippines" can be seen in the background of this clip, so we reverse image searched (archived here) a still from the video and looked for a YouTube video that would show Harris at this event. We found that Harris was at a November 2022 event titled, "Manila Bulletin," where she was holding a women's empowerment town hall (archived here) in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
At the 16:49 mark in the YouTube video, Harris says the exact words heard in the X post. However, she speaks at a normal pace and does not sound as she did in the claim.
TrueMedia, an AI detector, found there was "substantial evidence" of facial manipulation of the Harris clip:
(Source: TrueMedia screenshot taken on Mon Oct 21 17:18:58 2024 UTC)
TrueMedia's "Face Manipulator Detector" found an 88 percent chance of facial manipulation, and the "Video Facial Analysis" detected a 49 percent chance of manipulation. Evidence of the percentages are below:
(Source: TrueMedia screenshot taken on Mon Oct 21 17:21:26 2024 UTC)
The University of Buffalo's DeepFake-o-Meter found multiple likelihoods that the clip from the claim was AI-generated. Evidence of DeepFake-o-Meter's findings are below:
(Source: DeepFake-o-Meter screenshot taken on Mon Oct 21 17:46:29 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories has fact checked multiple claims that Harris was publicly intoxicated, here and here.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding Kamala Harris are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
Updates:
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2024-10-21T18:59:31Z 2024-10-21T18:59:31Z This has been updated to add analysis by TrueMedia and the University of Buffalo's DeepFake-o-Meter.
