By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press
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 House and 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.
“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.