00:03Welcome to Euronews fact-checking show TheCube.
00:06A series of AI-generated videos showing thousands of people protesting in different European cities
00:12has been shared on TikTok.
00:14These videos, published in the past four months,
00:17claim that citizens have gathered to protest against immigration,
00:21the state of the country, the current government or for nationalist values.
00:26The Cube team has identified this kind of content,
00:29targeting users in Portugal, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the UK.
00:35However, the protests are now real, despite some of the videos looking fairly convincing.
00:41In fact, TikTok has labeled the content as AI-generated,
00:45giving us our first clue that the protests did not take place,
00:49but many users, while scrolling, appear to believe they did.
00:52Most of these videos also ask the audience to engage with the content
00:56by writing their opinions about the protests
00:58or sharing the name of the city from which they are watching.
01:02Many of them pose as the legitimate news outlets.
01:05For example, in this Portuguese video,
01:07the journalist allegedly works for the state-owned media RTP,
01:12while the graphics resemble those of Sick Noticias.
01:15Her location is also off.
01:17In real life, the Tagos River flows where the building she's standing in is depicted.
01:22The videos use three common misinformation techniques,
01:26emotional language, AI-generated content and polarization.
01:30TikTok says it bans AI-generated content that is misleading about matters of public importance
01:36or violates its misinformation guidelines.
01:39Under the European Digital Services Act,
01:42it must also take effective measures against content
01:45that could negatively affect civic discourse and electoral processes.
01:50Some videos, however, seem to slip through.
