Does an authentic video show U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer describing complaints of predatory sexual behavior against Jimmy Savile as "frivolous"? No, that's not true: According to multiple AI video and audio detection tools, the video was fake and created with artificial intelligence. Starmer, who served as the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales from 2008 to 2013, never described the complaints against Saville as "frivolous."
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X on January 3, 2025. The post's caption said:
For those who haven't seen it, this is Keir Starmer ADMITTING he knew about the investigation into Jimmy Savile but stopped it as he thought the claims were 'frivolous'.
Disgraceful that this man is our PM 😡😡😡
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 16:41:22 2025 UTC)
This post and video provide no evidence to support the assertion that it is an authentic video of Starmer calling complaints about TV personality's Jimmy Savile's sexual abuse "frivolous."
AI detection
Lead Stories used various AI detection tools to determine that the video and audio in the post were fake.
TrueMedia
The AI detector tool TrueMedia (archived here) found "Substantial Evidence of Manipulation," indicating Starmer's face in the video was AI-generated or manipulated and his voice was cloned or AI-generated:
(Source: True Media screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 17:23:54 2025 UTC)
TrueMedia faces and voices
Additional analysis from TrueMedia is shown below:
(Source: TrueMedia screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 17:44:31 2025 UTC)
Media Forensic Lab
Lead Stories also ran the video from the social media post through AI detection tools at the University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, which focuses on "the forensic analysis of digital media." Together, these tools are called the DeepFake-O-Meter. The following screenshot shows the results after the clip was processed through six separate detectors connected to the site to analyze the video and audio together. Five of the tools found it was likely AI generated:
(Source: DeepFake-O-Meter screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 17:57:15 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories also ran the isolated audio from the video separately through the DeepFake-O-Meter. Of the six audio detectors used, five of them found the audio was likely AI-generated:
(Source: DeepFake-O-Meter screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 18:04:51 2025 UTC)
Original video
The fake video is a manipulated version of an interview Starmer gave to The Guardian 12 years ago. The real clip (archived here) was published on YouTube on December 19, 2012. It doesn't mention Saville at all. Instead, Starmer talks about new rules for social media prosecutions when he was in charge of public prosecutions.
This is what it looked like on YouTube at the time of writing:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 18:04:51 2025 UTC)
The video is embedded below:
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning Keir Starmer can be found here.
Additional fact checks concerning Jimmy Saville are here.
