Trump calls video of bag thrown out of White House fake. A White House official reportedly suggests otherwise
During an Oval Office event, President Donald Trump was asked about a video that began circulating online this past weekend of what appears to be a bag being thrown out of a second-story window at the White House.
Trump said on Tuesday that it was "probably AI-generated" and said that you can't open the windows at the White House. It's not clear when the alleged incident occurred.
A reporter asked if Trump was aware of the video, saying, "There is a video that is circulating online now of the White House where a window is open to the residence upstairs, and somebody is throwing a big bag out the window. Have you seen this?"
To which Trump suggested it was made with artificial intelligence and said, "You can't open the windows. You know why? They're all heavily armored and bulletproof."
"I know every window up there," Trump continued. "The last place I'd be doing it is that because there's cameras all over the place, right? Including yours?" the president asked the reporter.
Earlier on Tuesday, however, a White House official implied in a statement to TIME magazine that the video was real and showed a contractor doing "regular maintenance."
ABC News has reached out to the White House about the discrepancies between the two different answers.
ABC News has not independently verified the video's authenticity. But one expert said it appeared unlikely the video is an AI fake. Hany Farid, chief science officer at GetReal Labs and an expert on synthetic media, told ABC News that he does not see any evidence that indicates the video is AI-generated.
"I'm not seeing any evidence that this video is AI-generated or manipulated," Farid said. "We do not detect any digital watermarks that are sometimes inserted at the point of AI-generation. The shadows in the scene, including the shadow cast by the tossed bag, are all physically consistent. The motion of the waving flags has none of the tell-tale signs that you often see in AI-generated videos. The overall structure of the White House appears to be consistent, including the flying of the American and POW/MIA flag."
Farid noted that AI-based video generation models today typically produce videos no more than eight to 10 seconds long, a limitation that can be circumvented by stitching two clips together by generating a new video based on the final frame of the last one.
"Having said that, the length of this video does add some evidence that it is unlikely to be AI-generated," Farid said.
