What was claimed
A video shows massive crowds shutting down London during a march to demand halal food standards.
Our verdict
False. This is a fake video generated using artificial intelligence, confirmed by the presence of a Google SynthID watermark in both the audio and visuals, together with classic AI hallmarks such as morphed faces and garbled text.
A video claiming to depict massive crowds which have ‘shut down London’ with a march demanding halal food standards is fake.
The video has been shared on Facebook with the caption: “BREAKING: Massive Crowds Shut Down London Demanding Halal Standards!”
The clip shows a crowd marching down what resembles a London street, with many holding Union Jack flags and signs advocating for halal food (food which is prepared in accordance with Islamic dietary laws). The crowd also appears to be chanting: “Access to halal for all.”
But this is not genuine footage of a protest taking place in London. It has been generated with AI.
We found it contained Synth ID, an invisible watermark added to content made with either Google or OpenAI’s tools. In this case it contained a SynthID for Google throughout both the visuals and the audio.
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There are numerous other signs it has been created with AI, including morphed and glitched faces among the protesters, and garbled text on many of the signs.
But despite these errors, which are classic hallmarks of AI-generated content, the video has hundreds of comments from people who mistakenly believe it to be real.
We also couldn’t find any evidence or reports of a pro-halal march such as this taking place in London, or elsewhere in the country.
We have previously debunked other videos which appear to show Muslims in the UK, which we believe are part of a trend which uses AI to create ‘ragebait’—online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage in order to drive engagement with the content.
Before engaging with content like this that you come across online, it’s important to consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and verifiable source. Our Full Fact misinformation toolkit contains tips on how to do this, and our guide to spotting AI fakes.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because this isn’t genuine footage of a protest in London over halal standards, it’s been created with AI.
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