Deceptively altered videos of President Joe Biden with audio added to depict him receiving profanity-filled jeers are spreading on TikTok without any labeling or disclosure, seemingly violating the platform’s policies. TikTok has a history of falling short when it comes to moderating AI-generated or deceptively altered content.
According to TikTok’s Community Guidelines, “synthetic or manipulated media that shows realistic scenes must be clearly disclosed” by displaying “a sticker or caption, such as ‘synthetic’, ‘fake’, ‘not real’, or ‘altered.’” The policy goes on to specify that “material that has been edited, spliced, or combined (such as video and audio) in a way that may mislead a person about real-world events” is not allowed.
TikTok has a history of failing to enforce this policy and could have allowed users to profit from content violating it. Deepfake videos promoting bitcoin scams, sketchy health products, and AI-generated conspiracy theories have proliferated on the platform, along with other deceptively edited videos of politicians. In some instances, users may have profited from TikTok’s Creator Rewards program (formerly the Creativity Program), which is designed to pay creators for content over 60 seconds long that they post on the platform.
Media Matters has now found multiple videos on TikTok that depict Biden with altered audio and do not have any labels or disclosure about the alteration. (These videos are less than 60 seconds long, so they appear to not be eligible for the rewards program.)
On April 29, Snopes identified a video of Biden’s April 17 visit to a Pittsburgh-area Sheetz convenience store, which was altered to include profanity-filled jeers and other heckling and was shared on social media. The inserted audio reportedly originated from a video taken by a protester heckling Biden’s motorcade during his 2023 visit to Maui.
We identified at least 3 TikTok posts of this video with altered audio, none of which were labeled or disclosed as such.
