Video of Ocasio-Cortez talking about cease-fire is a deepfake | Fact check

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
Updated ·2 min read
34

The claim: Video shows Ocasio-Cortez talking about the meaning of a cease-fire

A Nov. 17 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talking about the concept of a cease-fire.

“Cease-fire means that somebody sees a fire,” Ocasio-Cortez appears to say in the video. “It could be any kind of fire. It could be a big fire or a small fire, a bonfire or even a candle flame. It just matters that somebody sees a fire – that’s why we call it a cease-fire.”

The post was shared more than 3,000 times in 10 days. The same video was also shared on Instagram.

More from the USA TODAY Fact-Check Team:

Our rating: Altered

The video is altered. It was created with AI, mixing fabricated audio with authentic video. The creator of the altered video labeled it as a deepfake, but others have shared it without the disclaimer.

Video uses AI-generated audio

The video appears to be a deepfake, according to Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California who specializes in digital forensics. It alters an Oct. 23 Instagram Live video by Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, adding cloned audio and using CGI to cover her mouth in an apparent attempt to synchronize its movements with the new audio, he said.

Farid said in an email there are “some tell-tale signs that this is a deepfake.” One example is when Ocasio-Cortez says the “b” in the word bonfire. Farid noted that her mouth is open but “the sound requires the lips to be pursed while making it.

“This type of phoneme/mouth mismatch is typical in lip-sync deep fakes,” Farid said.

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The video carries a watermark reading “C3PMeme.” The altered video was also shared by an Instagram account with that handle, using a hashtag that labeled it a deepfake in a Nov. 17 post. The C3PMeme Instagram account's bio reads, "Meme Making Droid and Digital Mischief Maker."

The Facebook user who shared the claim said he shared it as satire, but the post lacks anything labeling it as such.

USA TODAY also reached out to the originator of the video for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Reuters also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: AOC comments on cease-fire are digitally altered | Fact check

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