Fact Check: Ukrainian Flag On Statue Of Liberty? No, Viral Video Is AI-Generated
AI-generated videos shared on social media falsely claim to show the Ukrainian flag being raised on the Statue of Liberty. The videos, created using Sora, have no credible evidence.
The Verdict [Fake]
The viral clip, created with Open AI's Sora, was first uploaded on TikTok with an AI label. No credible reports confirm the Ukrainian flag was raised.
What's the claim?
Several social media users on X and Threads have shared a video that appears to show the Ukrainian flag being raised on the torch of the Statue of Liberty in New York City, United States. The 10-second video posted on Threads consists of two drone-shot clips. In the first, a person wearing a high-visibility vest is seen attaching the flag to the torch. The second shows a small group of individuals in high-visibility vests and construction helmets standing on the torch while the flag flies.
On X, users have shared a zoomed-in, three-second version of the first clip. Archive links to these posts are available here, here, here, and here.
However, the video was likely created using artificial intelligence (AI). There are no reports or official records of the Ukrainian flag being raised on the Statue of Liberty.
What did we find?
We found no reports confirming that the Ukrainian flag was hoisted on the Statue of Liberty. The National Park Service, which manages the monument, has made no announcements or statements regarding such an event.
We also reviewed live webcam footage from EarthCam, which monitors the statue, and found no frames showing the Ukrainian flag on the torch.
Additionally, the full version of the video shared on Threads contains a 'Sora' watermark in the bottom right corner, indicating it was created using OpenAI’s text-to-video model, Sora. The shorter versions shared on X do not display the watermark, as they have been zoomed in to crop it out.
Tracing the video’s origin
A reverse image search of keyframes from the video led us to its earliest known upload, a TikTok post from March 3, 2025 (archived here). The post was labeled 'AI-generated,' and its caption read: "The AI video opens with a sweeping aerial view of the Statue of Liberty, standing majestically against the backdrop of a clear blue sky." Hashtags such as '#aivideo' and '#sora' further suggest it was AI-generated.
The same TikTok user also shared a photo collage on March 4, 2025 (archived here), explaining how to generate similar flag videos using Sora.
The Misinformation Combat Alliance's Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU), which Logically Facts is a part of, also analyzed the video using deepfake detection tools Hive AI Image Classifier and WasItAI:
- Hive AI Image Classifier assigned a 0.30 score to Sora at the seven-second mark, suggesting AI involvement.
- WasItAI detected a "chance that this image or parts of it were created by AI" in a keyframe from the first clip.
The verdict
The video is AI-generated and contains a watermark from Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video model. There are no credible reports or visual evidence supporting the claim that the Ukrainian flag was raised on the Statue of Liberty.
This report first appeared on logicallyfacts.com, and has been republished on ABP Live as part of a special arrangement. Apart from the headline, no changes have been made in the report by ABP Live.
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