AAP FACTCHECK – Artificial intelligence experts agree that a video claiming to show a victim of assault by US vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is fake — but their conflicting assessments over how it was produced reflect the increasing sophistication of fake videos seeking to spread disinformation.
The video, which has gone viral on social media on various platforms including X, Instagram and Facebook, claims to be Matthew Metro, a former student of a school Tim Walz taught at. A fake account on X called Matt Metro also carried the video.
But the video doesn’t feature the real Matthew Metro, and intelligence agencies believe it’s part of a Russian disinformation plot.
One of many similar posts claims: “Matthew Metro has come forward and officially Accused Tim Walz of s*xually assaulting him while Walz was his teacher at Mankato West High School in 1997. This is disturbing.”
The four-minute video begins with a man claiming he is Matthew Metro, and that he’s a “survivor of sexual assault”.
He says he was a student at Mankato West High School in Minnesota (34 seconds), that Tim Walz was his teacher (1:11), and alleged that Mr Walz groped and kissed him (from 2:51).
Tim Walz was a teacher at Mankato West High, as has been widely reported.
But the man in the video is not Mr Metro. The Washington Post tracked down the real Matthew Metro, who said he did attend the school but that the man in the video is not him.
He told the newspaper that he never met Mr Walz, and that no such assault occurred.
The real Mr Metro was also interviewed by Hawaii News Now, in which his voice sounds completely different to that in the faked video.
AAP FactCheck contacted Mr Metro but didn’t receive a response by deadline.
The fake video features numerous other red flags. The voice appears to be regularly out of sync with the mouth and the speech often appears unnatural.
AAP FactCheck asked two experts to assess the video for signs of AI.
Dr Andrew Lensen, a senior lecturer in artificial intelligence at Victoria University in Wellington, said he believed the video was likely an AI deepfake.
However, he said it was difficult to be sure given the video’s low resolution — though he said this was often a tactic used to hide deepfakes, as lower quality makes them harder to spot.
“The biggest sign to me is the teeth, where the top and bottom lines of teeth often ‘merge’ together in the frames before the ‘person’ closes his lips,” Dr Lensen said.
“There are also a lot of breaks in the video, where the camera suddenly appears to zoom out or in from one frame to the next, especially between sentences/statements.
“While it is possible that the person in the story made the video from several cuts, it does seem unusual to have it broken up in this way.
“Finally, the movements of the eyebrows, upper brow, and even the eyes as he talks feels odd — the eyebrows are raised at times that don’t match with the speech.”
Professor Hany Farid of UC Berkeley, an expert in digital forensics, misinformation and image analysis, assessed the video differently.
“Beyond the biometric inconsistencies, I am not convinced that this video is AI-generated or AI-manipulated,” Professor Farid told AAP FactCheck.
He analysed three aspects of the video, using models trained to distinguish real human voices, faces and mouth movements from AI-generated or manipulated versions.
“The audio shows only minor evidence of being AI-generated but not overwhelmingly so,” Prof Farid said.
“The face shows no evidence of being AI-generated.
“And … I find no evidence of a lip-sync deepfake.”
He added that “there are none of the usual signs of this being a deepfake video in terms of things like inconsistencies between the head movements and spoken word”.
“I think it is more likely that this is a cheapfake in which someone is simply impersonating another person”.
Following the video’s wide dissemination online, US intelligence services said Russians trying to disrupt the US election created and amplified a “faked video” attempting to smear Mr Walz with abuse allegations, according to The Washington Post.
One official said Russian operatives had sought to use videos in which people speak directly into a camera and make them go viral on social media.
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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