A video claiming to depict large crowds “locking down London” on a march to demand halal food standards is fake.
The video was shared on Facebook with the caption: “Breaking news: Huge crowd shuts down London demanding halal standards!”
The clip shows a crowd marching through what resembles a London street, many carrying Union Jack flags and signs supporting halal food (food prepared according to Islamic dietary laws). The crowd also seemed to be chanting “halal access for all”.
But this is not real footage of the protests taking place in London. Generated by AI.
It turns out that some of them include Synth ID, an invisible watermark added to content created with tools from Google or OpenAI. In this case, it included Google’s SynthID across both visual and audio.
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Many other signs have been created using AI, with demonstrators’ faces deformed or glitched, and many with garbled text.
But despite these errors, which are a typical feature of AI-generated content, the video has received hundreds of comments from people who mistakenly believe it to be real.
We also found no evidence or reports of such pro-halal demonstrations taking place in London or elsewhere in the country.
We have previously debunked other videos that appear to show British Muslims, and we believe these are part of a trend of using AI to create ‘rage bait’ – online content deliberately designed to elicit anger and anger in order to drive engagement with the content.
Before engaging with such content found online, it is important to consider whether it comes from a reliable and verifiable source. Our Full Fact Misinformation Toolkit includes tips on how to do this and a guide to spotting AI disinformation.
