Fox News Got Duped by AI—and Lied About It

Summary

Bulwark Takes: "Fox News Got Duped by AI—and Lied About It"

Date: November 1, 2025
Host: Tim Pool (The Bulwark)
Theme: How Fox News reported as fact a series of racist, AI-generated videos, failed to properly retract or clarify, and what this incident reveals about partisan media, misinformation, and the dangers of rapidly advancing AI technology.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tim Pool of The Bulwark unpacks a jaw-dropping media failure: Fox News reported viral AI-generated videos—purporting to be Black women angry over losing their SNAP benefits—as if they were real news. Fox News then issued a weak correction that failed to grapple with the gravity of their mistake. The episode explores the broader implications for media responsibility, the manipulation of racial stereotypes, and the perils of unregulated AI in shaping public discourse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

How the Story Broke

• Triggering Event: Tim Pool is alerted by a friend to a Fox News article pushing a "welfare queen" narrative as a political counter to Trump’s proposed SNAP cuts.
• Fox’s Strategy: Fox attempts to revive 80s-style racialized welfare stereotypes to distract from how SNAP cuts also affect rural Trump voters.
• Quote [03:30]: "It's like, okay, well how can we, let's go back to the old playbook. Let's go back to the 80s playbook. Let's see if we can get some welfare queen stuff out there." – Tim Pool

The Absurdity of Fox’s Reporting

• Fox News runs the grievances of supposed SNAP recipients—who discuss multiple baby daddies and taxpayers "feeding their kids"—without verifying their realness.
• Key Passage [04:22]: "Fox describes this person as another user on social media. That user said, 'because of the government shutdown, now I can't get my snaps for next month. I have seven different baby daddies and none of them’s good for me.'"
• Fox commentator Brett Cooper lectures the fake woman in a video segment, compounding the blunder.
  • Notable Quote [04:57]: "It is not the American taxpayers fault that you have seven baby daddies who will not step up ... like, this should be a warning sign for everyone." – Brett Cooper

The Viral Discovery: It Was All Fake

• After Pool tweets about the article, commentators like Hasan Piker point out the videos are AI-generated.
  • Quote [06:09]: "Some others observing that ... this story ... is actually quoting AI Robots, not people ... fake videos of black people complaining about not getting their SNAP benefits and using kind of a series of racist tropes." – Co-host/Commentator
• These videos are created with tools like ChatGPT-Sora and spread using racist prompts that play to Fox’s intended narrative.

Media Ethics & the AI Wild West

• Fox’s gaffe is likened to forwarding obvious chain-email hoaxes, but with more sophisticated tech.
• Quote [07:14]: "We are just 100% through the looking glass." – Tim Pool
• The incident shows how easily partisans can be manipulated by AI—and how little mainstream media outlets may do to verify authenticity.

Fox’s Lame Correction and Lingering Harm

• After public outcry, Fox merely edits the article’s headline to reference “AI videos,” without any real retraction or admission of error.
  • Original vs. Updated Headline [08:47]: From "SNAP beneficiaries threaten to ransack stores over government shutdown" to "AI videos of SNAP beneficiaries complaining about cuts go viral."
• Pool highlights how the new headline and story are still misleading.
  • Quote [09:53]: "Actually, no. We should just be clear. ... The AI videos are fake. They're videos of imaginary people that some racist conjured and prompted SORA to create for them."

The Media’s Basic Responsibilities in the AI Era

• News outlets must verify if their supposed sources are real people—a basic standard now more urgently needed.
  • Quote [12:41]: "If you're a news organization ... you need to confirm that that person exists in the world ... in 2025, the person you're watching on your TikTok might not be a person, it might be a computer."
• Fox still refers to these AI creations as “women,” a falsehood that Pool tears apart with trademark sarcasm.
  • Quote [15:12]: "These are not videos of women. If they're AI generated, they're fake videos. They're videos of computers. ... The women in these videos do not have vaginas because they're not women. They are computers."

The Real-World Consequences

• Pool hammers home the cynical motive: advancing derogatory racial narratives to distract from SNAP cuts affecting white, rural (often MAGA) voters.
  • Quote [17:00]: "Fox News is so far around the bend that they're literally posting articles and commentary about AI videos, pretending like the people are real because they want to advance ... fucking hurtful derogatory narratives and stereotypes about some black women who receive SNAP when the reality is ... it's actually a lot of working white MAGA poor that are receiving snap."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On media gullibility:
  "Fox really is the Facebook Trump voting boomer of the news world. And they acted like one of the things that you get on a forward, forward, forward email." – Tim Pool [08:05]

• On failing basic fact-checking:
  "How do you just update the story like that? Like, we got fooled. ... No, you were wrong. Like, you got fooled. You got fooled by a fake video. It shouldn't have been a news story in the first place."
  – Tim Pool [09:53]

• On AI’s role:
  "Now people can just create racist videos, pass them off as real, post them on social media, get viral, get a lot of attention, and then supposed news outlets will cover that and pretend as if it's a real thing."
  – Tim Pool [06:55]

• On Fox’s editorial failure:
  "The problem was not that you didn't note it. The problem was that you got fucking tricked and you reported like it was real. You reported the comments from imaginary people and said that this is something that real people are posting on social media ... The issue was that the entire article was fake."
  – Tim Pool [16:18]

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Timeline & Timestamps of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:00 | Tim Pool introduces the Fox News/A.I. video debacle | | 01:45-03:14| Discussion of the welfare queen/media bias narrative | | 04:22 | Reading the Fox News article’s alleged “user complaint” | | 04:57 | Brett Cooper's on-air takedown of the AI-generated video | | 06:07 | Discovery that the subjects are AI-generated | | 07:14 | AI explainer—rise of troll videos and media manipulation | | 08:47 | Side-by-side comparison of Fox’s original vs. revised headlines | | 12:07 | Pool plays and critiques additional AI-generated TikToks | | 15:12 | Media’s repeated mischaracterization of fake people as real “women” | | 16:18 | Breakdown of Fox’s editor’s note and the irreparable damage | | 17:00 | Episode closing summary on Fox’s intentions and societal context |

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Tone & Delivery

• The tone is incredulous, openly critical, and laced with sarcasm.
• Tim Pool blends sharp media analysis with deadpan humor and righteous anger, especially over the normalized racism and dangerous precedent set by media negligence.
• The language retains the “Bulwark” mix of civically engaged punditry with biting, sometimes profane commentary.

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Takeaway

This episode is a searing indictment of Fox News’ willingness to propagate racist, partisan narratives—even at the cost of basic journalistic integrity—by uncritically accepting and amplifying AI-generated fakes. It highlights the urgent need for media literacy and accountability in the digital age, particularly as AI tools accelerate the production of plausible but entirely fabricated content.

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If you want an entertaining yet sobering lesson in the intersection of bias, technology, and media failure, this is a can’t-miss segment.

Transcript

[Tim Pool]

Mr.

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[Tim Pool]

Hey everybody. Tim oh from the Bulwark here. Fox News got fooled by a series.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Of racist AI videos who are purporting to be black women complaining about losing their SNAP benefits. But the women weren't real and Fox reported it as news.

[Tim Pool]

Anyway, let me repeat, Fox News got.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Fooled by a series of racist AI.

[Tim Pool]

Videos purporting to be black women complaining.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

About losing their SNAP benefits. And they reported those complaints that were made by computers pretending to be humans as if they were real news. Yikes. Yikes.

[Tim Pool]

Let me explain how all this came.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

To pass, how it came to my.

[Tim Pool]

Attention, because I think it's an interesting.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Story about kind of the intersection between know MAGA media, partisan media derangement and you know, this brave new world of AI that we are entering into where people can feed. Very, very true to like very real seeming videos that play to the prior biases and bigotries and you know, resentments of media outlets, partisan media outlets, particularly on the MAGA side, that want to advance a narrative. And so like this is just the first example, but it is such a stark example of just Fox News's horrific news judgment and their bigotry that it's worth kind of walking you through exactly what happened and how, how this came to pass.

[Tim Pool]

So on Friday, a friend flagged for.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Me a Fox article in which they're trying to resuscitate this welfare queen narrative to combat the fact that, you know, their boy Donald Trump is cutting people off from their SNAP benefits right now for no, no reason actually he's doing it illegally. Like they have the money to do it. And there's currently litigation on this matter. But like the Trump administration is going to cut people off or wants to cut people off. And obviously that's bad politics. There's a lot of MAGA folks on snap. There's a lot of Trump voters on snap. That's just in general, people think people.

[Tim Pool]

Should be able to get healthy food, get food on their table. And so in order to kind of try to change the narrative on this, you have Fox, which acts as a part time news organization, part time super.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

PAC for Donald Trump.

[Tim Pool]

It's like, okay, well how can we, let's go back to the old playbook. Let's go back to the 80s playbook. Let's see if we can get some.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Welfare queen stuff out there. And that way the Fox viewers won't be thinking about, you know, the poor rural whites that are going to lose their food, their food. In which case they might be mad about that because they're sympathetic to those folks plight.

[Tim Pool]

But instead we want the Fox News.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Viewers to be thinking of something that they won't like, you know, a black lady in the inner city.

[Tim Pool]

And so Fox runs this article and.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

I tweeted it out just talking about how absurd it is to like cover these random people's complaints about SNAP as if it was news and pointing out just like how obvious it is what FOX is trying to do here with their race baiting. And I tweeted the article and like.

[Tim Pool]

Highlighted a specific section.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

I'm going to read from it.

[Tim Pool]

Fox describes this person as another user on social media. That user said because of the government shutdown, now I can't get my snaps for next month. I have seven different baby daddies and.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

None of them good for me.

[Tim Pool]

She said crazy.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

That video had also a takedown component. So this was a written article on Fox, but also a Fox contributor, Brett Cooper did a video takedown of that. Let's watch that together.

[AI Generated Character Voice]

Because of the government shutdown now I can't get my stocks for next month. How I'm gonna feed my seven kids. I have seven different baby daddies and none of them no good for me.

[Brett Cooper]

Ma', am, this is an insane video to make. That is your responsibility. And side note, maybe we could use this as an opportunity to fix the broken families in America. To remind people to be careful about who you sleep with and who you have children with. Because it is not the American taxpayers fault that you have seven Baby daddies who will not step up and help you pay the grocery bills. Like, this should be a warning sign for everyone.

[Tim Pool]

So let's put a hold on that with Brett Cooper, because maybe, maybe it isn't exactly what she's saying. Maybe the story isn't as easy as.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

She seems, like she's there on her high horse lecturing this random person on.

[Tim Pool]

The Internet, but maybe the story's a little more complicated. So I tweet this. Even if these were real people, this is an absurd story to cover.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

And it's outrageous to try to, like, nut pick a handful of people that you think will play into the racial prejudice of your audience. Insane to consider that and consider the news judgment on that.

[Tim Pool]

But the problem here is the people aren't even real. Many of the people they're quoting aren't even real. After I sent the tweet, some others who are deeper into the TikTok game.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Than me quote tweeted me, including Hasan.

[Tim Pool]

Piker and some others observing that, like, wait, this story that Tim is pushing out is actually quoting AI Robots, not people, clankers. And that there is this trend going.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

On on social media where there are a lot of videos of various black people. I mean, black, again, they're robots, but fake videos of black people complaining about not getting their SNAP benefits and using kind of a series of racist tropes about why that might be.

[Tim Pool]

So those videos are very popular. They've been created in part by chatgpt Sora. So shout out to Sam Altman, thank you for this. It's really great that we just started.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Living in this wild, wild west.

[Tim Pool]

Now people can just create racist videos, pass them off as real, post them on social media, get viral, get a lot of attention, and then supposed news.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Outlets will cover that and pretend as if it's a real thing. I mean, we are just 100% through the looking glass.

[Tim Pool]

And we've got Sam Altman and his.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Buddies who decided that they just want totally animal spirits unfilled, fettered marketplace on this one, without any regulations, without any actually thought about, well, you know, what it might do for society.

[Tim Pool]

So anyway, these videos are getting created and all of a sudden now this.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Is spiraling for Fox.

[Tim Pool]

Like it's getting a lot of attention.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Like Fox literally ran a story about how outrageous it was that people were complaining about not getting their SNAP benefits because they deserved the taxpayers pay for them, they, their kids. And to find out that the whole premise of the story was fake. It was based off fake videos. They got fooled. Like they are A Facebook boomer.

[Tim Pool]

And Fox really is the Facebook Trump.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Voting boomer of the news world. And they acted like one of the things that you get on a forward, forward, forward email.

[Tim Pool]

It's like, whoa, have you seen this crazy thing?

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

And it's like, well, wait, no, that's actually a fake thing.

[Tim Pool]

So Fox covers that as news. This creates a stir, a kerfuffle on the Internet. And you wonder what Fox reaction might be to that. Obviously sensitive to posting fake information after.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Having lost that 700 plus million dollar.

[Tim Pool]

Lawsuit to Dominion voting systems.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

They update the story this way.

[Tim Pool]

And I should point out that the.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Story is by Alba Fantazzi.

[Tim Pool]

So, you know, we should shout out.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Journalism of this nature when we see it.

[Tim Pool]

They update the story. New headline is this AI videos of SNAP beneficia stories complaining about cuts go viral. So like this story, the story that they had originally posted. Like, rather than just saying, no, we were wrong, like the original here, let's just pull the two headlines back to back. The original story said this SNAP beneficiaries threatened to ransack stores over government shutdown. So like, that is their news peg is that there are people who are threatening to loot because they're losing their SNAP benefits. That's stated as fact in Fox subhead one mother claims taxpayers must feed her.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Children as SNAP benefits face cuts. You can feel their tone about how you should be outraged at these freeloaders. I love. Also, this is in the cultural trends section.

[Tim Pool]

Oh yeah, oh yeah, cultural trends. I see what you're doing there. Then they update the same story, same link. No, like, oh, retraction, none of that. And they changed it from Snap beneficiaries threaten to ransack stores over government shutdown to AI videos of SNAP beneficiaries complaining about cuts go viral. Like what? You got it totally wrong. You claim these are real people and now you're trying to make this headline AI videos of SNAP beneficiaries complaining. Actually, no. We should just be clear. This is even still wrong. The AI videos are not of SNAP beneficiaries complaining. The AI videos are fake. They're videos of imaginary people that some racist conjured and prompted SORA to create for them. Like that is. That is what's happening here. These aren't even AI videos of SNAP beneficiaries complaining. But, but like, how do you do, how do you just update the story like that? Like, we got fooled. It could be like me coming on.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Here on the Bulwark with our TDS.

[Tim Pool]

And doing a story about how I watched this video And a woman said.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

That they had sex with Donald Trump in 1985 and that he finished in under eight seconds and that he had a strange kind of wart on his testes and that he has a lizard tongue. And I came on here and I posted this story about how we have.

[Tim Pool]

This exclusive on a woman that slept.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

With Trump 40 years ago, and she says he has a forked tongue and a wart on his balls.

[Tim Pool]

And then finding out that it wasn't actually a woman that slept with Trump.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

It was a fake video that somebody created.

[Tim Pool]

And then rather than correcting the story or changing it or apologizing, just updating it to be like, AI Video of Trump lover says he has warts on his balls. What? No, no, you were wrong. Like, you got fooled. You got fooled by a fake video. It shouldn't have been a news story in the first place. You got fooled by fake video, and now you're just out there continuing to follow up the story. Actually, I want to go through their. Their.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Their article here, their attempt to clean up.

[Tim Pool]

But just. Just to give a sense of what.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

We'Re talking about, I want to play.

[Tim Pool]

Some of the AI videos that they're discussing.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Like, in this first one here, you can kind of see up in the upper left corner the SORA watermark that's flashing. They try to blur it out, but you can see it. Let's watch this one.

[AI Generated Character Voice]

I'm gonna keep it real with you. I get over 2,500amonth in stamps. I sell them 2000 worth for about 12 to 1500 cash. That's why everybody's upset. Folks say we're taking advantage, but that's how we get by. And that's the frustration we're hearing out here in downtown Atlanta.

[Tim Pool]

And, okay, and again, does look pretty real. So, like, on the one hand, you know, this is not like, getting fooled.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

By one of these old deepfakes that were terrible.

[Tim Pool]

Like. Like, these things are getting good. But, like, you're a news organization, and so if you're going to do an interview, if you're going to do an article based on a fact that was presented by a person, you need to confirm that that person exists in the world. You know, you can't just, like, run with it. And one of the reasons you can't just run with it is because nowadays, in 2025, the person that you're watching on your TikTok might not be a person, it might be a computer. And so if you're a news organization, you gotta, like, prepare for that Anyway, the article goes on like this. What appears to have been an artificially generated video of SNAP beneficiaries expressing outrage on social media over the government shutdown have gone viral. Here's the one that they highlighted in both it's the taxpayer's responsibility to take.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Care of my kids.

[Tim Pool]

It's a taxpayer's job to pay for my kids to eat and for my kids to be taken care of. I feel like Fox's spidey sense could have clicked on that one. And it's just like, who talks like that? It's the taxpayer's responsibility to take care of my kids. Nobody talks like that. That is obviously a troll. It's obviously a right winger trolling the.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Mindset of the welfare state left.

[Tim Pool]

And you would think that anybody who I guess Fox, especially where they have right wingers that do these kind of.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Trolls would have been able to sniff that out.

[Tim Pool]

Anyway, the new article continues.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

It includes the one previously mentioned about.

[Tim Pool]

The seven different baby daddies. And then again, it goes on. Other similar videos of women also claiming to have seven different children and seven fathers for them also went viral in what appeared to be AI generated content. I do just have to correct them one more time. These are not videos of women. If they're AI generated, they're fake videos. They're videos of computers. They've been conjured. They're not videos of women. Those are not women. What is a woman? It's a good question. The Daily Wire has been onto this for a while and Fox and Matt Walsh has been on Fox. What is a woman? Oftentimes their answer boils down to genitalia. The women in these videos do not have vaginas because they're not women. They are computers. If you're going to get fooled by AI videos and then try to fix it by turning the article into a article about the racist AI video trend, you should, at least not in that cleanup article, still pretend like these are.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

Real humans that were advancing the right wing tropes about black working mothers in the cities. Because they're not real people.

[Tim Pool]

The article ends like this. Editor's Note the article previously reported on some videos that appeared to have been generated by AI without noting that this has been corrected. The problem was not that you didn't note it. The problem was that you got fucking tricked and you reported like it was real. You reported the comments from imaginary people and said that this is something that real people are posting on social media and that says something about what the policy should be. It was a total fabrication your other story. So it wasn't as if you just didn't note the sourcing. It wasn't like you quoted something from an old book and you forgot to include the footnote. No, that was not it. The issue was not the footnotes. The issue was that the entire article was fake.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

It was based on a fucking racist gag.

[Tim Pool]

He got tricked and he passed along his news. Okay, great job, Fox. Anyway, we'll keep keeping an eye on this. A lot of news around what is happening with the SNAP benefits. We'll be back for more. I just, you know, I had to share this with you. I just was too crazy, just too crazy to think, like, here's what we are. Fox News is so far around the bend that they're literally posting articles and commentary about AI videos, pretending like the.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

People are real because they want to advance. Like these, you know, fucking hurtful derogatory narratives and stereotypes about some black women who receive SNAP when the reality is huge.

[Tim Pool]

It's actually a lot of working white MAGA poor that are receiving snap.

[Co-host or Guest Commentator]

So. And the whole thing is just, it's.

[Tim Pool]

Too on the nose. But here, here we are. This is where we are in this world these days. So, everybody, I appreciate it. Appreciate you. We'll be back with more. Trump's on 60 Minutes tomorrow. So we'll probably have a reaction to that and who the hell knows what else the news cycle will bring. We'll see you soon.

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[Tim Pool]

Mr.

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No purchase necessary. See [e-mail] for full details and amoe.playmcd.com to play without purchase ends November 23rd, but bonus play ends November 2nd. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro. Copyright McDonald's.