Left-leaning social media users have been widely sharing an audio clip that supposedly captures former President Donald Trump angrily demanding that US officials prevent the release of documents tied to financier Jeffrey Epstein.
But researchers warn that the voice in the clip is synthetic.
The clip, which has appeared on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, features a Trump-like voice shouting, “Not releasing the Epstein files … If I go down, I will bring all of you down with me.” These posts have generated millions of views and thousands of comments.
Disinformation-fighting group NewsGuard said the audio is a “AI-generated fake.” According to their investigation, the clip appears to originate from video content made using Sora 2, OpenAI’s text-to-video model, which only recently gained audio capability.
In some reposts, the video was stripped of Sora’s watermark making it harder to trace that the content was artificially created.
In addition to the fake audio, there’s also misinformation about a quote falsely attributed to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Some users on X (formerly Twitter) claimed she said, “It is not President Trump who is in the Epstein emails. It is another person with the same name.” That quote has gained millions of views but according to fact-checkers, she never made that remark.
Trump, for his part, has reiterated that he has “nothing to do” with Epstein. Interestingly, he recently signed a bill into law that mandates the release of Epstein-related documents. Still, experts caution that even with the law in place, the administration could use redactions or delays to limit what becomes public.
Epstein, a financier who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, had connections to many powerful people. The push for “Epstein files” to be released reflects long-standing public demand for transparency around his network and activities.
