Did the BBC use AI to fabricate remarks by President Donald Trump in a Jan. 6, 2021, speech in a documentary that aired just before the 2024 election? No, that's not true: The $5 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the BBC does not allege that it used AI. Instead, it argues that the network edited together unrelated portions of the president's speech to misrepresent his words.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on X by the account RedWave Press on March 17, 2026. It opened:
Reporter: Can I ask you how you're doing with your legal case against the BBC and their fake news documentary?'
President Trump: 'They put words in my mouth and said I said some pretty bad things. And I didn't say it; it was AI-generated.'
'I'm very proud of the term fake news.'
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @RedWavePress on X.com.)
You can watch the video here:
Reporter: Can I ask you how you're doing with your legal case against the BBC and their fake news documentary?'
-- RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) March 17, 2026
President Trump: 'They put words in my mouth and said I said some pretty bad things. And I didn't say it; it was AI-generated.'
'I'm very proud of the term fake... pic.twitter.com/POJc5JNirG
Trump's comments came during a St. Patrick's Day 2026 meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin at the White House. When asked by a reporter about his lawsuit against the BBC, the president said the documentary "put words in my mouth" and, twice during the nearly two-minute clip, claimed they were "AI-generated."
The lawsuit
Trump's attorneys filed the lawsuit (archived here) on Dec. 15, 2025, seeking $5 billion from the BBC. Their case argues that the BBC "maliciously" strung together two comments Trump made more than 54 minutes apart to convey the impression that he'd urged his supporters to engage in violence as electoral votes were set to be tabulated by Congress.
It would have been impossible for BBC's journalists and producers to splice together two distinct parts of the Speech from nearly 55 minutes apart unless they were acting intentionally. Such a dramatic distortion could never have occurred by accident.
Nowhere in the lawsuit do the words "artificial intelligence" or "AI-generated" appear.
The network apologized to the president last year, and on March 16, 2026, asked a federal judge to throw out (archived here) the libel case.
You can read the original lawsuit here:
