Did Kash Patel use AI to rip off the Beastie Boys? : NPR

A still from an FBI promotional video (left) closely resembles the opening shot of the original 1994 music video for Beastie Boy’s “Sabotage” (right). NPR found at least six examples where shots in the FBI video matched those in the music video. Experts say the most likely explanation is that AI was used to recreate the plans.

Screenshots by Emily Bogle for NPR/X and YouTube

hide caption

toggle caption

Screenshots by Emily Bogle for NPR/X and YouTube

A promotional video for the FBI released by director Kash Patel appears to have used AI to generate short clips almost identical to Beastie Boy’s iconic music video for their classic 1994 song “Sabotage.”

Patel posted the video Monday on X, in an article about the FBI’s efforts to combat “massive fraud.” The approximately two-minute video used the instrumental version of the song “Sabotage” and almost identical footage to the original music video, interspersed with what appeared to be authentic footage of FBI agents doing their job.

As of Tuesday, it had received around half a million views.

An NPR analysis shows that at least six clips of the FBI video were frame-by-frame recreations of shots from the iconic “Sabotage” music video, directed by Spike Jonze. The clips featured vehicles, people, and buildings incredibly similar to the original video, but with small differences that would likely be generated by AI.

For example, in a shot where a car spins, the grills are clearly visible in some windows in the original footage, but they are absent in the FBI version of the clip. Another shot shows an individual with a megaphone jumping from roof to roof with telephone lines in the background. The lines and dirt on the building all line up identically to the 1994 video, filmed over 30 years ago. In one image, one of the phone lines appears to go through the character’s head: the kind of glitch that can be common in AI video generation.

Representatives for Spike Jonze and the Beastie Boys did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. The FBI also did not respond to NPR’s request for more information about the video and how it was made.

Independent experts who reviewed the video for NPR agreed that the clips were likely AI-generated.

An image from the FBI promotional video shows telltale signs of AI-generated imagery: the driver’s arm appears shrunken and red and green lights are illuminated on the red light.

Screenshot by Geoff Brumfiel for NPR/X

hide caption

toggle caption

Screenshot by Geoff Brumfiel for NPR/X

“It seems very likely that it is AI,” Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the online investigative group Bellingcat, said in an email to NPR. “You can even see some AI errors.”

For example, Koltai says there’s a moment of signature AI-generated artifacts that appear in the “No Fraud” license plate on the FBI car in the opening shot.

The clips were likely created by taking screenshots or short clips from the original “Sabotage” clip and integrating them into an image-video model, Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in digital image analysis, wrote to NPR in an email. It’s also possible that the AI ​​model generated the video clips itself because the original video clip was in its training data – although Farid thinks this is less likely.

Regardless, Farid thinks AI is involved: “The similarities are difficult to explain otherwise,” he writes.

During President Trump’s second term, members of his administration enthusiastically co-opted popular music, movies, and memes to spread their message, even as artists protested.

The use of AI is also a common tactic. Notably, last October, President Trump himself posted an AI-generated video of himself pouring brown liquid on protesters at a “No Kings” rally set to the song “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. Loggins requested that the video be removed. It remains on Trump’s Truth Social account.

In January, the White House released an AI-enhanced image of a protester in Minneapolis who had been arrested by federal authorities, without indicating that the image had been manipulated.

Patel, born on Long Island in 1980, would have been in middle or high school when the Beastie Boys released “Sabotage.”