By Rebekah Harding

Copyright dailydot

President Donald Trump speaks out about the Wednesday shooting of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk in a video posted to the White House social channels. However, some viewers suspect he modified the clip using AI.

Did Trump use AI in a video about Charlie Kirk?

In a video posted shortly after Kirk was shot and killed at a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, Trump calls the political activist a “patriot” and a “martyr.”

As the president speaks, his hands and shirt appear to glitch slightly.

Many viewers are chalking up the glitch to AI usage, criticizing the White House for seemingly using the technology to address an assassination on X.

“Uhhhh, can some of the bigger accounts start talking about the Trump Oval Office address being AI. This is a pretty big deal,” one user posts alongside a clip of the gitch:

“So yesterday was incredibly weird. First, Trump is one of the first people to announce that Charlie had died. Immediately after that, MAGA influencers began pushing Civil War spin. Then, Trump gave an address that was at least partially AI-generated. Remarkably weird things are happening,” another says.

“This very much looks like an AI avatar of Trump delivering an official message for the president, his body and hands barely move for the entire video, also…they missed this weird glitch, what’s going on here?” a third remarks.

However, one video expert assures viewers that the White House did not use AI in the video. Instead, the president may have employed a lesser-known video editing technique.

What video editing technique was used instead?

In a video with over 374,000 views, TikToker Brian Alldridge (@brianalldridge) validates viewers’ observation of minor glitches throughout the video. However, he says it’s not AI. It’s called “a morph cut.”

“You’ve got two separate clips that are stitched together. What the software will do is analyze the difference between those clips and generate new frames to fill the gap,” he says.

@brianalldridge Here’s a quick breakdown of the video editing technique used in the latest press release. ♬ original sound – Brian Alldridge

He explains that the technique was previously popularized in the Star Wars movie, so different parts of two takes could be used in the final film.

“But in videos like this, it’s mainly used to kind of smooth over filler words,” he suggests.

In the comments, viewers react to his assurance that the president did not use AI.

“Ah, ok, that explains it. He was talking too smoothly for too long, which he can never do normally,” one says.

“So what happened was he couldn’t do a coherent take, so they had to stitch together a bunch of takes until the message was coherent enough to where they felt it got his point across,” another added.

“I think the issue is that the White House is putting out digitally altered videos as part of the official record! Yeah, that’s what’s problematic. Not many people care what type of manipulation was used,” another comments.

The Daily Dot reached out to Alldridge for further comment.

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