Fake Protest Videos Are the Latest AI Slop to Go Viral in MAGA World

Last week, OpenAI released Sora 2, the latest version of its AI video creator, along with a new Sora app for making and sharing those videos. The new tool has led to an explosion in realistic AI videos on social media, including plenty of fresh discussion about intellectual property^[1] rights. But one of the oddest things to emerge with Sora 2 is a new crop of videos showing AI protesters.

These aren’t just any protest videos. Specifically, supporters of President Donald Trump appear to be making videos of protesters being brutalized by the federal agents and troops who have been sent to U.S. cities. Trump has most recently tried to deploy National Guard troops to Portland and Chicago, and while those deployments have been delayed by the courts, those cities are still crawling with ICE agents terrorizing immigrant communities.

One of the new fake protester videos, which has over 40 million views^[2] on Instagram, shows someone clad in black shouting in the face of a soldier dressed in fatigues.

“What’s your name, soldier?” the AI protester yells repeatedly. The text on the screen reads “wait for it” before the AI soldier sprays the protester with orange pepper spray, yelling back “Sergeant Pepper.”

The video has been shared on several platforms, including TikTok and X, where many people don’t seem to understand it’s AI. The actor James Woods, a Trump supporter who frequently shares right-wing memes on X, wrote on Tuesday about the video, “Couldn’t get better than this. Haiku-level brilliant.” Many of the comments seem to be just as oblivious to the fact that it’s AI.

Another video that’s become popular on Facebook^[3], Instagram, and X shows AI protesters shouting “no queso, no cheese,” apparently a racist riff on the common protest chant “no justice, no peace.” The AI protesters in the video are also sprayed with a chemical agent.

The video has gotten over 1.5 million views on X alone, with the caption, “Lmfao, that was beautiful and before you ask I voted 100 for this!!”^[4]

The phrase “I voted for this” has become a common thing for far-right supporters of Trump to say when something particularly brutal has happened to their political opponents.

Lmfao, that was beautiful and before you ask I voted 💯 for this!! pic.twitter.com/O6VLFZnw3i^[5]

— 🇺🇸Steve2A🇺🇸God🇺🇸Family🇺🇸Country🇺🇸 (@lakemonstercl1) October 7, 2025^[6]

The Instagram version of the video includes the caption “Liberals acting like clowns – got treated like clowns by federal agents – goodbye – FAFO,” an acronym for “fuck around and find out.” Some users on Instagram have pointed out that it’s AI, but the account insists in the comments that it’s real.^[7]

It’s not real, obviously. And the big Sora watermark should be the clue to anyone who’s familiar with OpenAI. But unfortunately, that kind of watermark isn’t enough for most people these days to differentiate between fake and real content.

The shorter Sora videos are also being compiled into larger compilations of AI-generated fakes, like in this one on X^[8] that includes jokes about the protesters being paid. It’s a common right-wing accusation that all the people protesting Donald Trump are actually paid to be there, often by liberal activists like George Soros.

The most curious thing about all of these fake protester videos is that there are plenty of real videos to share. For example, a pastor in Chicago was shot in the head with pepper balls by agents last month. Rev. David Black was protesting outside an ICE facility near Chicago, Illinois, and was simply speaking peacefully when he was attacked.

Another one of several videos showing protesters getting brutalized while doing nothing wrong was recently captured in Portland. A woman is seen simply talking with police before she’s sprayed for absolutely no discernible reason.

Unbelievable. Outside the Portland ICE facility, a man and a woman were standing and talking to a pair of cops with shields when one of them draws his pepper spray and unloads it into her face. She was still crying out in pain several minutes later and had to be taken away to get… pic.twitter.com/2j2CVdO5rC^[9]

— Dispatches and drama from Seattle protest scene (@bennetthaselton) October 3, 2025^[10]

But real videos of a pastor or a woman getting treated with unnecessary violence don’t really fit the narrative that President Trump and his fascist goons are trying to sell. Trump has claimed the reason he’s sending agents and troops to U.S. cities is that they’re overrun with crime. And he just wants to restore law and order.

In reality, violent crime is near a 50-year low^[11], and Trump is simply trying to strike fear into the hearts of ordinary Americans as his thugs disrupt countless lives. That disruption is having an economic impact, as restaurants in Chicago are comparing the loss of business^[12] to the start of the covid-19 pandemic.

Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing so many fake videos of protests on social media right now. They need a pretext to justify their brutal crackdown on working people. Trump himself seems to have been convinced to deploy the National Guard to Oregon because he saw too many old videos of Portland from the summer of 2020^[13] on TV. And when it comes to Trump, he’s pretty easy to fool.

Trump has even shared an AI video of himself promoting a magical “med bed^[14]” that can cure all diseases. The president’s Truth Social account deleted the video, but it’s still not clear why he shared the conspiracy theory in the first place. It’s entirely possible he thought it was real. We simply don’t know.

Remember when the president saw a photoshopped image of the letters “MS-13” on someone’s hand back in April and insisted it was real^[15]?

Trump is not a smart man. And his followers are even dumber, as they spread AI slop far and wide, creating an alternative reality where sadistic troops dole out punishment to the left on American streets. Unfortunately, you don’t need AI to see so much brutality right now. And if Trump has his way, you’re going to see a lot more of it very soon.