A Facebook reel showing the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group chief Maj. Gen. Nicolas Torre III dancing on a stage is fake and made with artificial intelligence.
A reader sent a request through VERA Files’ Messenger Misinformation Tipline to verify the video.
Posted on March 11 by an FB user, the 22-second video featured “Torre” dancing before a crowd that was cheering him on and taking videos of the performance. Its caption read:
“General Torre right now:”
No such video was posted on social media accounts belonging to Torre, the PNP or the CIDG.
The video bears the watermark of Viggle.ai, an AI-powered editing software that promotes itself as a “meme generator.”
Viggle.ai has an editable video template of social media personality Elias Lintucan – who goes by the name Elias J. TV online – dancing at a Feb. 12 concert in New Corella, Davao del Norte. Other clips of the event posted on TikTok show his performance from different angles.
This template was the one used in the fake Torre video, as the latter reflects the dance moves and crowd seen in the former.
The AI-manipulated video circulated amid the PNP’s arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte on March 11, acting on a notice from Interpol and an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Torre read the Miranda rights to Duterte during the arrest. The CIDG also announced it was Torre’s birthday on the same day.
The circulating fake clip garnered over 27,000 reactions, 3,400 comments and 3.4 million views. The video was reposted by another FB user on March 12 and has over 53,200 reactions, 8,200 comments, 3.3 million views and 12,000 shares.
