Did the BBC use AI to fabricate statements from President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, in a documentary broadcast just before the 2024 election? No, that’s not true. Trump’s $5 billion lawsuit against the BBC does not allege that the BBC used AI. Rather, the network claims it misrepresented the president’s words by editing out irrelevant parts of his speech.
This claim appeared in a post and video on X (archived here) by the RedWave Press account on March 17, 2026.
Reporter: May I ask how the case against the BBC and its fake news documentary is progressing?
President Trump: “They put words in my mouth and said I said something pretty terrible. And I didn’t say it. It was generated by AI.
“I’m very proud of the term fake news.”
This is what posting on X looks like at the time of this writing.
Image source: Posted by @RedWavePress on X.com.
You can watch the video here:
President Trump’s comments came during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day in 2026. Asked by a reporter about the lawsuit against the BBC, the president said the documentary “put words in my mouth” and claimed twice in the nearly two-minute video that it was “generated by AI.”
lawsuit
Trump’s lawyers sued the BBC for $5 billion on December 15, 2025 (archive here). Their lawsuit alleges the BBC “maliciously” spliced together two comments made by President Trump more than 54 minutes apart, creating the impression that Trump encouraged his supporters to commit acts of violence as electoral votes were scheduled to be counted in Congress.
It would have been impossible for a BBC journalist and the producer stitches together two different parts of the speech that are approximately 55 minutes apart. unless there is They were acting intentionally. Such dramatic distortions accident.
The words “artificial intelligence” and “AI-generated” do not appear anywhere in the lawsuit.
The network apologized to the president last year, and on March 16, 2026, asked a federal judge to dismiss the defamation lawsuit (archived here).
The original text of the lawsuit can be read here.
