Trump says video showing items thrown from White House is AI after his
team indicates it's real
[September 03, 2025]
By MICHELLE L. PRICE
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that a video
circulating online that showed items being tossed out of an upstairs
window of the White House was created with artificial intelligence,
despite his press team seeming to confirm the veracity of it hours
earlier.
Trump, who has boasted of being an expert in building design as he takes
on remodeling projects at the White Houseand beyond, told reporters that
the video has “got to be fake” because the windows, he said, are heavy
and sealed shut.
The video, which circulated Monday, appears to show a small black bag
and a long white item being tossed out of a window on the building's
east side.
Trump blamed the video on AI, saying the creation of fake videos was one
of the downsides of the technology, but then said, "If something happens
that’s really bad, maybe I’ll have to just blame AI.”
Hours earlier, the White House seemed to verify that the video was real
when it told several news outlets that inquired about the video that it
was "a contractor who was doing regular maintenance while the President
was gone."
The White House did not respond to a message later Tuesday about the
discrepancy.
Trump denied that the windows can be opened and said “I know every
window up there." He went on to tell a story in which he said first lady
Melania Trump recently complained that she wanted fresh air from an open
window in the White House, "But you can’t. They’re bulletproof. And
number one, they’re sealed, and number two, each window weighs about 600
pounds. You have to be pretty strong to open them up.”
After Trump viewed the video on the phone of Fox News Channel reporter
Peter Doocy, the president again said the windows are sealed and again
blamed AI.
[to top of second column]
|
FOX News reporter Peter Doocy shows President Donald Trump a photo
on his phone during an event about the relocation of U.S. Space
Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama in the Oval Office of
the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
“It’s the kind of thing they do," he said. “And one of the problems
we have with AI, it’s both good and bad. If something happens really
bad, just blame AI. But also they create things, you know?”
Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation expert at the
University of California, Berkeley, who reviewed the video, said he
does not detect any digital watermarks that are sometimes inserted
into images 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
have 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 said in a statement.
Former first lady Michelle Obama, in a 2015 appearance on the “The
Ellen DeGeneres Show,” seemed to complain about not being able to
open windows in the White House, telling the host that she was
looking forward to life after the White House, saying she wanted to
take car rides with open windows and said, “The windows in our house
don’t open.”
___
Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed to
this report.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
