This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact-checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
Fake footage of anti-Government protest in Birmingham
A video which gained thousands of reactions on Facebook with claims it showed a large anti-Government protest in Birmingham is fake. The footage, which appeared to have been filmed from the air, showed a large crowd holding banners and Union flags. They appeared to have gathered in a public square near the Library of Birmingham.
It was shared last week with the caption: "More than 500 people have gathered in Birmingham to protest against the government, with demonstrators holding flags and banners as the situation continues to develop." But this clip – which was liked more than 6,800 times before we fact checked it, and has since been deleted – is not genuine. It was generated with artificial intelligence (AI).
We found both the visuals and the audio, which seemed to be noise of a crowd chanting, contained SynthID, an invisible watermark that appears in content created or altered with Google's AI tools. The presence of a watermark alone cannot tell us whether AI was used to generate something completely new or modify existing content, but in this case there were other clues that strongly suggested the clip was entirely created with AI. These include buses and cars travelling backwards, nonsensical writing on some of the visible protest signs, and groups of people appearing to blur and glitch unnaturally. The location shown also did not seem to match the genuine layout and geography of Centenary Square, next to the recognisable Library of Birmingham. And a spokesperson for West Midlands Police told us: "We're not aware of such a protest happening."
Misleading claims about mayor's message in Arabic
A video has been widely shared on social media with false claims that it is footage of the mayor of Rotherham calling for Sharia law and the deportation of non-Muslim UK citizens. That is not what the clip, which has circulated widely on X and Facebook, actually shows. It features councillor Rukhsana Ismail, a Labour councillor for the Rotherham East ward, speaking to the camera in her ceremonial role as the mayor of Rotherham.
In the short clip currently circulating she speaks in Arabic. Text included with some of the posts sharing it says: "Muslim mayor of Rotherham in the UK says that Britain can only be great again by implementing Sharia law, and demands the expulsion of all Non Muslims! Including British Citizens." That is not what Ms Ismail actually says in the video, however.
We traced the video to a longer version shared on her official councillor Instagram page on February 18, in which she speaks both Arabic and English. The original post is captioned "Ramadan Kareem (emoji) Ramadan Mubarak (emoji)". In the first few seconds of the footage when Ms Ismail is speaking in Arabic, she wishes people a "Ramadan Kareem", meaning "generous Ramadan", and delivers a blessing which we have verified using Google Translate. She then switches to English and talks about the meanings of the month of Ramadan, including "reflection, compassion and generosity".
As another fact checker has also verified, at no point does Ms Ismail mention Sharia law, or any kind of action against non-Muslims. We also could not find any evidence that she has made any such comments elsewhere. For some Muslims in the world, this year's Ramadan began on February 18, while it began on February 19 in the UK.
Videos are often reshared widely online with misleading captions, so before sharing content like this which you may come across on social media, take a moment to consider whether it comes from a verifiable and trustworthy source, and whether it shows what others say it does. Full Fact's toolkit can help you do this.
