Last week, we reported on a wave of AI-generated slop videos peddling misinformation about people who receive Supplemental Nutritional Assistant Program, otherwise known as SNAP or food stamps.
In one of the clips circulating online, a woman in a store rages at an employee.
“They cut my food stamps,” she says. “I ain’t paying for none of this s**t. I got babies at home that gotta eat.”
The video caught the attention of Fox News, which apparently missed the clues that the video wasn’t real. Over the weekend, the network ran a story treating the footage if it were genuine, using it to stir up anger against SNAP, which primarily benefits children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Fox‘s story has since been rewritten almost entirely, along with adding an extraordinary editor’s note at the bottom acknowledging that that it “previously reported on some videos that appear to have been generated by AI without noting that.” Amazingly, it still tries to argue that poor and working class welfare recipients are spoiled by SNAP, which provides a cold food stipend averaging just $177 per recipient per month.
As part of the rewrite, the original headline reading “SNAP beneficiaries threaten to ransack stores over government shutdown” has been updated to “AI videos of SNAP beneficiaries complaining about cuts go viral.”
“It is the taxpayer’s responsibility to take care of my kids,” a woman fumes in one of the videos originally presented by Fox as being real.
In the rewritten version of the story, Fox keeps the quote — but acknowledges that the video “appears to be generated by AI.”
As The Bulwark’s Tim Miller remarked, this would be a ridiculous story for Fox to run even if it were real.
“It’s outrageous to try to nit-pick a handful of people you think will play into the racial prejudice of your audience,” he said.
But the fact that Fox chose this slop as the source for a story on SNAP as some 41 million Americans are unsure how they’ll afford groceries is outrageous. This seems to be AI’s new role: manufacturing life-like “evidence” to justify harmful narratives. It’s a stupefying sign of things to come as these fakes become harder to distinguish from reality.
Updated to correct several references to specific AI-generated videos.
More on AI: The AI Industry Is Traumatizing Desperate Contractors in the Developing World for Pennies