WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Videos show mass protests taking place around the world.
OUR VERDICT
False. The footage is not genuine but AI-generated.
AAP FACTCHECK - In a year of extraordinary protests in cities around the world, a wave of clips generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is distorting the reality of what's actually happening on the streets.
Posts have appeared on Instagram and Facebook, supposedly documenting various protests in different countries, but the videos used have been generated using AI tools.
The fake footage has emerged during a time of large-scale demonstrations about wars, humanitarian crises, democracy, civil rights and nationalism in cities across the globe.
One Instagram video shows supposed protesters waving Israeli flags, chanting in unison: "Stop the war. Iran, we are sorry. We want peace."
Several signs, however, suggest the clip is AI-generated, such as the watermark of Google's AI video generator Veo 3 in the bottom right corner.
TJ Thomson, a visual communication expert at RMIT, pointed out that the clip is exactly eight seconds long, the default length of videos generated using Veo 3.
"Some of these examples are more convincing than others and the short duration and quick motion of videos hides anomalies that are easier to spot when the video is slowed down or examined frame by frame," Dr Thomson told AAP FactCheck.
There are anomalies in some of the protesters' faces and illogical inconsistencies, such as a flag pole appearing out of nowhere in a man's hand and one woman apparently dissolving into another woman in the final two seconds of the clip.
Similar clues can also be seen in a TikTok video claiming to show a Ukrainian protest, Dr Thomson said, with half of a Veo watermark visible and one woman's finger seemingly splits in two when she wipes her eye.
The reason the writing on the signs appears garbled, he explained, is that generative AI often has particular difficulty with accurately rendering typography.
Anomalies can also be seen in a Facebook post claiming to show a crowd protesting in the US.
"Another peaceful protest in LA. Trump is lying," the caption reads.
A close look, however, reveals that several supposed protest signs are completely blank.
A similar post claiming to show two clips from a pro-Palestine protest in Japan uses footage of a tightly packed crowd with the heading "Japanese people protested for Gaza's freedom".
A reverse image search shows that both clips were first posted on TikTok by a user who regularly posts AI-generated videos.
AAP FactCheck found no credible reports or images of any large demonstrations about Gaza in Japan at the time the post appeared.
J Rosenbaum, an AI expert at RMIT, said the two videos "are definitely AI-generated".
Key giveaways, Dr Rosenbaum told AAP FactCheck, are the written text, which is garbled and frequently illegible, and people's faces, as well as the buildings in the backgrounds and the presence of "artifacts consistent with generated content".
AI also struggles with crowded scenes, so mistakes often creep into faces and fine details.
Dr Rosenbaum said these are monetised videos, so creators often try to generate things along the lines of trending content: "The protests are big news at the moment, and these videos are hoping to cash in on that.
"Bad faith actors could also be using them to 'prove' that the real videos are fake by muddying the waters."
Dr Thomson said there were many possible reasons why such AI videos are being created and shared on social media, including mobilising support for a cause or to attract views and engagement.
They could also, he said, be used to "sow doubt in viewers' minds about what they're seeing, even when it's legitimate."
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