In Minneapolis, videos of the Alex Pretti killing undermined the federal government’s account. But an A.I. video of Brad Pitt shows the dangers ahead.
Is seeing still believing? Based on the evidence of the past week, it is hard to say.
Consider Exhibit A: Rauiri Robinson, an Irish filmmaker and visual effects artist in Los Angeles, posted two short A.I.-generated videos on X, a hyper-realistic action-movie sequence depicting Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting on a rooftop while arguing about Jeffrey Epstein. The clips were created, Mr. Robinson explained, by feeding a two-sentence prompt into Seedance 2.0, an A.I. video-creation tool newly released by the Chinese company ByteDance.
Its convincing imitation of an actual film sparked horror and outrage in Hollywood. “I hate to say it,” Rhett Reese, a screenwriter whose credits include the “Deadpool” films, wrote on X. “It’s likely over for us.”
But consider Exhibit B: The announcement on Thursday morning by Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s border czar, that federal immigration agents would soon withdraw from Minnesota. Although Mr. Homan declared the operation a success, the decision seemed a tacit acknowledgment of the political damage inflicted by bystanders’ videos of two fatal shootings of Minneapolis residents by federal agents last month.
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It is a paradoxical moment, in which documentary evidence is still able to land a few punches, even as new technologies threaten its credibility like never before.