IN A VIDEO showing a White House press conference, Donald Trump railed against the Irish government, calling the Taoiseach and Tánaiste “criminals” and “evil”. That speech, however, never happened. 

The footage that appears to show the US president ranting about Simon Harris and Micheál Martin has been viewed tens of thousands of times on Facebook, despite being an AI-generated hoax.

The actual footage comes from a recent announcement by Trump about an investment by the US electronics company Apple. However, in the fabricated version of the video, the audio has been switched out with what appears to be an AI-generated rant against immigration in Ireland.

“You who say Irish identity, sovereignty, and culture is backward,” Trump appears to say in the hoax video, before smiling toward Apple CEO Tim Cook, standing awkwardly next to him. “I will punish, humiliate and belittle you, for your sick globalist and woke ideology, anti-Irish agenda”.  

The fabricated audio, which is filled with misinformation, goes on to depicts migrants as a threat to women and children and the Irish government as EU puppets.

The speech, however, is fake. 

The footage is an exact match for a video posted by the US Public Affairs Network C-SPAN on 6 August, in which he announced that Apple had pledged to invest $100 Billion into America.

Trump also spoke on other issues, including insulting TV hosts such as Stephen Colbert, and saying news about the administration’s handling of the Epstein situation was a “hoax”. He did not, however, address Simon Harris or Micheál Martin, or talk about immigration in Ireland during that press conference.

The audio in the fabricated video appears to be generated by Artificial Intelligence software. While the accent of the speaker is American, and the tone of the voice is not unlike Trump’s, it does not sound like him.

The rhythm of the speech is unnatural, and sentences are broken up in odd ways that don’t make sense, possibly in an attempt to keep the audio in sync with Trump’s mouth movements in the video.

However, despite these flaws, the video appears to have duped many people.

“Never thought I would agree with him but in this case I do”, says one comment with more than 200 likes, posted under a Facebook video. A reply saying “that’s fake AI” garnered only five emoji responses.

Other posts disagreed with the message in the video, but also seemed to be convinced that the footage itself was real. “He should talk about crime,” one comment read. “He’s the biggest criminal in history.”

That version of the fabricated video has been viewed more than 72,000 times since being posted to Facebook on 10 August.

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.