Did President-elect Donald Trump say that if he was elected, he would personally have Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrested if Trudeau sets one foot in the United States? No, that's not true: This is an AI-generated voiceover that has been added to a video clip of Trump. The original TikTok video was marked with the hashtag "fake video." The fake audio has been added to other photos and videos and has circulated on social media without the disclaimer. The deepfake detection tools at TrueMedia.org determined with 100 percent confidence that this is AI generated.
The 18-second-long video (archived here) was published by @lovinglife82_ on TikTok on March 9, 2024. The post was captioned:
#trudeaumustgo #donaldtrump #arresttrudeau#notmyprimeminister #fakevideo #spoof #warning
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Nov 20 17:44:49 2024 UTC)
The transcript of the AI generated Donald Trump-style voiceover is:
Mr. Trudeau, If elected again in Canada, I personally will have him arrested if he steps one foot in the United States, and I'll do all of Canada a favor and throw away the key. I'll end the dictatorship in Canada once and for all. Stay strong Canada. Our neighbors, our brothers. God bless you all. Thanks.
Although the video is captioned with hashtags #fakevideo and #spoof, Lead Stories continued with the verification process. An advanced Google search (archived here) for a portion of the quote and the names Trump and Trudeau returned no news reporting that Trump had said this, but did turn up several fact checks reporting on the fake video. Lead Stories entered the URL of the @lovinglife82_ video on TikTok to TrueMedia.org to be analyzed by its assortment of deepfake detection tools. The TrueMedia.org verdict was there is substantial evidence of manipulation (see full report here). One tool had 100 percent confidence in the analysis finding that the audio had been AI generated; another had 100 percent confidence that the face in the video was a deepfake.
(Source: TrueMedia.org screenshot taken on Wed Nov 20 19:39:38 2024 UTC)
In the lower right corner of the video is a yellow text box that reads: "Trudeau must go 2024." In the upper left corner of the video is a still image of Trump and Trudeau. A reverse image search showed it was a Reuters photo from October 11, 2017, and was captioned:
U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House in Washington
Those two additions may have been placed to obscure the watermark of an AI voiceover-generating app called TryParrotAI.com. Lead Stories did a reverse image search with Google Lens (archived here) for the video of Trump speaking -- and those image search results (pictured below left) were full of videos with an assortment of made-up narratives. One example features the AI voiceover talking about a boat. The boat example bears the watermarks of TryParrotAI.com. Paying subscribers can produce AI videos without a watermark.
In the videos with watermarks the placement alternates between the upper left and lower right corners (circled in blue, below right) -- the same position of the added photo and yellow text box on the @lovinglife82_ video.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Google Lens, TikTok and YouTube screenshots taken on Wed Nov 20 20:08:20 2024 UTC)
Several versions of this deepfake video (here and here) are circulating on TikTok without any #fakevideo disclaimers. One March 9, 2024, post by @sweetcherrie13 (archived here) has the watermark from @lovinglif82_ (pictured below left) but the audio originally introduced by @lovinglife82_, the fake Trump dialogue, is now labeled as an "original sound - Cherbare." The TikTok page compiling videos with the Cherbare sound links to over 300 videos (pictured in part below right).
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with TikTok screenshots taken on Wed Nov 20 20:08:20 2024 UTC)
At the time this was written Logically Facts and AFP Fact Check had reviewed the same claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims including deepfake content can be found here.
