Video that supposedly shows ‘No Kings’ protest in the United Kingdom isn’t real; it’s AI

Did the British really join in on the Oct. 18 "No Kings" protests against President Donald Trump? A social media video tries to make you think they pulled off a coordinated nighttime spectacle.

A video shared in an X post with more than 154,000 views as of the afternoon of Oct. 20 showed protesters forming an illuminated human banner spelling out "No Kings."

"This No Kings protest in the UK against Trump and his Nazification of America is amazing," the X user wrote Oct. 18.

Other users on X and Instagram also shared the video.

(Screengrab of X post)

A couple of things in the video give away the verdict. 

The footage has a Veo watermark on the bottom-right corner. Veo is Google’s artificial intelligence video generating model, which can create videos up to 8 seconds long that include audio. This matches the time frame of the X video (without counting the TikTok watermark at the end).

(Screengrab from X post)

Some other signs of AI generation are:

• The video’s audio says "No Kings," but other parts of the chants sound like gibberish and lip movements don’t seem to correspond with the words.

• The bodies of some people look completely lit up, as if they were spirits.

• Most people in the video are indistinguishable; some look blurry and others are missing extremities. 

(Screengrab from X post)

V.S. Subrahmanian, a professor at Northwestern University’s Security and AI Lab, added, "The visual rendering of the words ‘No Kings’ appears unusually pristine and uniform."

While a human banner during the "No Kings" protests made an appearance Oct. 18 on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, it was during the day and included text saying, "No Kings YES on 50," a reference to the Proposition 50 question about California’s congressional redistricting. 

Other countries participated in the "No Kings" protests, including England, Canada, Germany and Portugal. We found no footage similar to what’s in the X post from the UK. 

The video originated on a TikTok account that says it’s "covering the news you need to see." The account has shared other AI generated videos. For example, on Oct. 19 it shared an almost identical video claiming to show footage from Washington, D.C.’s "No Kings" protests. Back in June, for the first weekend of "No Kings" protests, the account shared another AI generated video of a Philadelphia crowd.

The video doesn’t show a real "No Kings" protest in the United Kingdom. We rate it Pants on Fire!