Soon after President Donald Trump returned from his Middle East tour, a viral video began circulating that appeared to show the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, critiquing the president and his visit.
“I truly regret inviting Trump, the robber, to the Middle East,” Al Thani appeared to say in the viral clip. “He came to collect tributes, fountains, palaces, golden welcoming ceremonies, light shows, private flights. In his eyes, these grand gestures are not courtesies but spoils of war.”
The minute-long video alternated between close-up shots of Al Thani speaking and authentic clips showing Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East and his 2024 campaign.
The edited clip had garnered tens of thousands of likes and views across social media platforms as of May 21.
But the video is not authentic. Experts and contextual evidence show it was created using artificial intelligence, or AI.
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(Screenshot of Instagram post)
The video’s background and the emir’s clothing were identical to those from his 2017 “60 Minutes” interview with journalist Charlie Rose. But that original video did not show Al Thani making the statements that appeared in the social media posts.
The video has many visual red flags.
It shows Al Thani blinking unnaturally often. His voice is stilted. His mouth movements are misaligned with the audio. His hand gestures, experts noted, repeat as if on a loop.
Other experts flagged a subtle clue — his teeth. “A tell-tale sign is the sudden changes to the shapes and numbers of the teeth,” said Siwei Lyu, a University of Buffalo computer science professor. “Although they get the bulk part of the mouth shapes correct, due to technical limitations, maintaining consistent teeth shapes and configurations is one such cues.”
Visual edit created by University of Buffalo computer science professor Siwei Lyu and shared with PolitiFact.
We sent the video to Hany Farid, a professor at University of California Berkeley who specializes in AI detection. Farid’s analysis found the audio was likely AI-generated, and the video had discrepancies between the mouth and voice consistent with a lip-sync deepfake. “There is no question that this is a deepfake video,” Farid told PolitiFact in an email.
V.S. Subrahmanian, a professor at Northwestern University’s Security and AI Lab, also found the video was “likely generated via artificial intelligence.”
We searched through Nexis news archives and Google for any credible reporting that Al Thani publicly made such statements and found none.
With the abundant focus on U.S. and Qatar’s relationship following Qatar’s gift of a $400 million jumbo jet, critical comments would have made headlines. But none exist.
Based on the lack of evidence that this clip is authentic, and overwhelming evidence that it was created with AI, we rate the claim that this viral video is authentic Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
