A fake video circulating in the territory on Sunday appears to show United States presidential candidate Donald Trump calling for former Virgin Islands premier Andrew Fahie to be pardoned following his conviction on drug-conspiracy charges on Thursday in a Miami court.
The creator of the 12-second video — who the Beacon was unable to immediately identify — used artificial intelligence to overlay Mr. Trump’s voice over a video clip that had been circulating online at least since last year.
“If I was still the president, I would pardon Andrew Fahie. He’s a good man,” Mr. Trump appears to say in the doctored video, mispronouncing Mr. Fahie’s surname.
He appears to add that he would “investigate everyone involved” in the trial” and to say, “The British and the US put that guy away: not good.”
Such fake videos are becoming increasingly easy to make with the rise of artificial intelligence technology known as “AI.”
However, there are various online resources that explain how to debunk them.
The Beacon debunked this one by taking a screenshot from the video and then searching it with Google’s “Google Lens” image-search function.
This process located the same video clip on postings that pre-dated Mr. Fahie’s verdict on Thursday. Many of them are also fake.