As the immigration protests unfolded in Los Angeles, a flurry of misinformation hit social media platforms, sparking further confusion and tension in an already chaotic environment.
The demonstrations and the conflicting accounts surrounding them highlight the role social media plays in times of crisis.
In this case, social media appeared to play an even larger role as a growing number of users turned to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots — often with varying degrees of accuracy — to discern what was real and what was not.
“The past is prequel … everything we’re seeing is what we’ve seen in the past, simply in some cases with new technology applied,” said Darren Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.
While accurate, real-time updates were published on the protests, so were posts containing fake images, conspiracy theories or misleading information that garnered hundreds of thousands of views online.
These posts were shared by various users, from smaller accounts to well-known political figures like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Cruz was among several on the social platform X to repost a video showing multiple police cars damaged or set ablaze. The Texas Republican shared the video to argue the protests in Los Angeles were not as peaceful as some Democrats claimed.
It was later revealed the video was not from this week, but from the protests over George Floyd’s murder in 2020. A community note was eventually added clarifying it was old footage, prompting Cruz and others to delete the video.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) press office weighed in on the video, writing on X, “Misinformation like this only adds to the chaos the Trump administration is seeking. Check your sources before sharing info!”
“What we’re really seeing is any high risk event, which is time-bound, whether that be a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, has just become such fertile ground for online accounts to take advantage of,” explained Isabelle Frances-Wright, the director of technology and society at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue.
Other posts took images from video games or movies like “Blue Thunder,” which takes place in Los Angeles, to make it seem like there is a significant military presence in the city after President Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to quell the protests over the weekend.
“People believe what they want to believe, and so when they are seeing information that confirms their prior beliefs, they’re going to repost it. They’re going to believe it … regardless of whether that information is true,” Linvill said.
And on TikTok, an AI-generated video was shared Monday showing a National Guard member filming himself while on duty in Los Angeles.
The video did not include an “AI-generated” label often put on TikTok videos, but fact-checkers pointed to various inaccuracies in the video to show it was fake.
The video, posted by an account with the handle @maybenotquitereal, had more than 970,000 views as of Tuesday.
Experts say the situation underscores the increasing influence social media has in shaping public opinion and the upped risks with AI in the mix.
“That has the potential itself to exacerbate the situation on the ground because people are going to be more passionate about their set of beliefs,” Linvill said.
“Every fake story that comes out, it’s titillating, it’s interesting, and it spreads the story and makes the whole story bigger of the riots,” Linvill continued. “And that makes it simply more likely for angry people on both sides to want to go take part, to engage in the real world rather than just the digital world.”
As users tried to parse through the minefield of information, some turned to AI chatbots, like X’s Grok or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to determine whether the posts were real and accurate.
This showcases a new trend of increasing trust in AI, even if it bolsters confusion with potentially inaccurate information, Linvill explained.
“People want to believe AI. People have a tendency to trust technology, especially when the technology is again telling them something they want to believe,” Linvill told The Hill.
While many answers from the chatbots accurately pointed out fake or out-of-context shots, some users were left more confused from their response to a photo posted by Newsom on Monday.
Amid his battle with Trump over deploying the National Guard, Newsom posted photos of troops deployed in Los Angeles sleeping on the floors “without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep.”
One user said they used ChatGPT’s reverse photo search to determine when they were taken. The chatbot mistakenly said they were taken in 2021 during the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, sparking a flood of rumors about Newsom’s use of the images.
According to a screenshot from a BBC News Verify journalist, Grok shared a similar response initially about the photos, but it later said the images were real and from a San Francisco Chronicle report over the weekend.
“Grok is a machine to do what it’s coded to do, and sometimes it simply doesn’t have the context to answer the question, but it’s always going to try to give you an answer, right or wrong,” Linvill said.
Frances-Wright, whose research focuses on technology’s impact on society and the information ecosystem, further argued the community notes system used to add context to X posts still present a “consistency” issue where fact checks will be placed on some posts, but not on others that are “blatantly false.”
Amid the confusion came a deluge of conspiracy theories, a common occurrence during times of crisis.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly claimed on X and his Infowars show that the protests are being funded by “deep state” Democrats. Jones has more than 4 million followers, and his posts received hundreds of thousands of views.
No evidence has emerged to back Jones’s claim.
Other posts with images of bricks emerged, with users claiming they were bought by prominent Democrats like George Soros to fund the protests against ICE.
“It’s Civil War!!” said one user in a post that had more than 820,000 views. A community note was added clarifying the photo was taken by a Malaysian building supply company and is not connected to the LA protests.
Real Raw News, known for publishing misinformation and fabricated stories, shared a post Sunday claiming U.S. Marines arrested California National Guard Command Chief Master Sgt. Lynn Williams for opposing Trump’s orders.
The claim was baseless, and even though Real Raw News is widely regarded as a fake news site, several users appeared to believe it. One user commented “treason,” while another said they shared it to Facebook.
As of Monday afternoon, the post had nearly 514,000 views with more than 8,000 reposts.
Experts told The Hill posts with this language or conspiracy theories reinforce Trump’s stance on immigration and his argument that the violence and chaos of the protests began before he deployed the National Guard and Marines.
The posts with misinformation “are the same kinds of incendiary claims that we see over and over again across the ideological spectrum by a whole host of actors with different motivations,” said Frances-Wright.
It comes amid the Trump administration’s broader push for mass deportations. Trump and his team blame Democrats for allowing what they say is an “invasion” of migrants crossing the nation’s southern border.
“Actors with specific political agendas [are] trying to use the moment and the confusion of a moment like this to further a political agenda,” added Frances-Wright, whose research focuses on technology’s impact on society and the information ecosystem.
