DeepfakeMedium
Purportedly AI-Recreated Clips from Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage' Video Reportedly Appeared in FBI Promotional Video Posted by Kash Patel
- Occurred
- May 4, 2026
- Published
- May 5, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
An FBI promotional video posted by Director Kash Patel reportedly used AI-generated clips that closely recreated shots from the Beastie Boys' 1994 "Sabotage" music video directed by Spike Jonze. NPR identified at least six matching clips and quoted experts who said AI likely recreated the footage, possibly from screenshots or short clips. The video promoted FBI anti-fraud work and received roughly half a million views by the next day.
Developers
- Synthetic video generation technology developers
- Deepfake technology developers
Deployers
- Kash Patel
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
Harmed parties
- Spike Jonze
- Musicians
- Filmmakers
- Epistemic integrity
- Copyright holders
- Beastie Boys
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: AI-generated clips recreating copyrighted footage for a government promotional video raises deepfake and copyright concerns.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8