Amid the lead-up to, and the fallout from the U.S. general election earlier this month, some social media users shared an audio recording of what sounds like U.S. president-elect Donald Trump promising to have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrested. This recording is fake. The audio clip can be traced back to a site that creates AI-generated videos of celebrities, multiple tools used to detect the use of generative artificial intelligence software flagged the clip as a likely fake and there is no official record of Trump saying what's in the video.
A TikTok () on Oct. 27 included separate still images of Trump and Trudeau with an audio recording of what sounds like Trump speaking.
"Mr. Trudeau, if elected again in Canada, I personally will have him arrested if he steps one foot in the United States," the voice says. "And I'll do all of Canada a favour and throw away the key. I'll end the dictatorship of Canada once and for all. Stay strong Canada, our neighbours, our brothers. God bless you all. Thanks."
The sound has been shared in hundreds of videos on TikTok with millions of views, and was recently shared on as well. The audio has since been disabled on TikTok but is still available on Instagram and elsewhere.
Rating: Fake
Using a , Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ could not find any record of Trump saying what's in the clip.
The original sound used in the Oct. 27 TikTok post comes from () uploaded on March 9, 2024.
That post, itself a repost from , includes a video of Trump apparently speaking along with the audio, however his lips are often out of sync with the words. At the end of the clip a small logo featuring a silhouette of a parrot appears.
The logo matches that of . The site boasts that users can "make a celebrity say anything," and includes options to make video and audio spoofs of hundreds of celebrities, including Trump.
The site offers various videos of Trump that can be paired with any text, but the basic – and free – version appears to use video from an interview Trump had in 2017. Trump's clothing matches what he's wearing in the NBC interview, as well as what can be seen in the background.
The TikTok video has an image of Trudeau and Trump in the corner, possibly to cover a watermark placed on videos created on Parrot AI for free.
Multiple examples of the same manipulated video can be found online, including one in which Trump appears to and another where he endorses a .
AI use detected
Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ ran the audio through four publicly available AI-detection tools, some of which use AI algorithms to analyze content.
Three of the tools flagged the audio as a deepfake, which means it was manipulated by AI. The fourth gave inconclusive results.
Deepfakes are audio and visual media that have been digitally altered or newly invented by AI.
A representative from life sciences technology firm , which in May released a study on using vocal biomarkers to detect deepfakes, analyzed the clip and also found it to be a likely deepfake, but a "good one."
"It has virtually uninterrupted speech with only one micropause and no macropauses," said Yan Fossat, senior vice-president of digital health research and development at Klick Labs, in a Nov. 21 email. "Speaking in this manner is highly unlikely for humans who need to breathe and think of their next word."
, associate professor with the department of communication studies at Concordia University and co-director of the university's Applied AI Institute, said a Concordia student also ran the clip through a detector and found it was likely AI generated, but cautions these tools aren't always accurate.
"Of course, the tools are not always a hundred percent reliable," McKelvey said in a Nov. 21 email, "but when they flag it as possibly AI generated, it usually means that the inputs is very likely fishy."
McKelvey also says deepfakes are often used like memes, which are typically humorous pieces of video, images or text shared widely on the internet, with users adding their own variations.
Indeed, it does seem as if the original video was one among many churned out by Parrot AI, and many of the TikTok posts included hashtags signalling that the content was meant to be comedic, including #voiceeffects, #fakevideo and #spoof.
However, others reposted the audio without the video or any indication the voice was inauthentic.
users to label AI-generated or edited media that shows realistic-appearing scenes or people.
According to TikTok's community guidelines, users are to post AI-generated content involving a public figure "taking a position on a political issue, commercial product, or a matter of public importance (such as an elections)."
However, they allow for "the likeness of a public figure in certain artistic or humorous settings."
The viral audio was still available as of Nov. 21, but has since been disabled on the platform.
Sources
Claim can be found on TikTok (), () and (), and on Instagram ()
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YouTube videos that use the same AI-generated template as the TikTok can be found () and ()
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(results were inconclusive)
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