Fact Check. Donald Trump's youngest son "wows" audience on US talent show?

Barron William Trump, 18 years old, over 2 meters tall, Donald Trump's youngest son. The last time he had worldwide exposure was on January 20, the day his father was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States — the brief words he exchanged with Joe Biden, right after Trump's inauguration , caused some ink to flow, especially speculation about the now ex-president's reaction to Barron's questioning, which was interpreted as a mixture of surprise and astonishment at what he had just heard from the son of his successor in the White House. Now, there is a new episode.

In dozens of Facebook posts, a video is shared, or links to other networks where the same video has been shared, in which Barron appears on stage. He takes a few steps towards the microphone and then begins to sing a religious song and “leaves everyone amazed with his performance” — which, in some of the videos, is followed by a “motivational” speech that brings tears to many of those present in the room. In front of him are dozens of people in the seats reserved for the audience and, in an area closer to the stage, the judges of the North American version of a well-known television program, America's Got Talent.

“Barron Trump leaves judges stunned with stunning performance on America's Got Talent,” read the caption of the various posts. The reactions of social media users who saw the images varied between immediate accusations that the content was generated using Artificial Intelligence and messages of congratulations for the performance.

In a search for the origin of the images, the first publication in which it is possible to identify the video was made on February 9, on YouTube. The author expressly states that “the song and the video were created with the help of AI technology and do not in any way reflect the positioning or attitude of the targeted artists”. In fact, he adds, the “artist” on stage — Barron Trump — “was not involved” in that production. This publication had more than 3 thousand “likes” and 359 comments when Observador consulted it for the last time, at the end of February.

The same video would end up being shared dozens and dozens of times on Facebook. However, in this multiplication of shares, some of the information was lost. Namely the one in which it is said that it is not real content, which ended up misleading several users, thinking that they were watching a real performance by Donald Trump's son on one of the most popular television programs, not only in the United States but in many other countries. "You are truly great, Barron, thank you very much for showing us your talents", wrote one of the users in reaction to that content.

Despite the warning from the author of the video himself — and, unsurprisingly, the absence of any news from credible sources reporting this supposed “action” —, Observador used a platform for detecting products generated by Artificial Intelligence.

In the three frames analyzed by SightEngine, the results indicate a probability of between 89 and 99% that it is content generated by Artificial Intelligence or a Deepfake.

Conclusion

The images of Barron Trump performing for an audience of dozens of people on a US television talent show were created by Artificial Intelligence software. The author himself admits this — although this information escaped many of the social media users who shared the video — and also a platform for recognizing artificially generated images, which assigns a probability of between 89 and 99% that the content is not real.

So, according to the Observer's rating system, this content is:

WRONG

In Facebook's rating system , this content is:

FALSE : The content's main claims are factually inaccurate. This option typically corresponds to “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking sites.

NOTE: this content was selected by Observador as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.