Chris Cuomo Fell for an AI Video Labeled "100% Fake" and It Gets Worse From There
The video was watermarked "parody 100% made with AI." Cuomo shared it anyway, then pivoted to attacking AOC about Hamas. It's even dumber than it sounds.
NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo wants you to know he's a serious journalist. He’s a former CNN anchor, which makes it extra special that he just fell for a laughably bad AI-generated video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling Sydney Sweeney's jeans ad “Nazi propaganda.”
The fake AOC in the video, which Cuomo apparently watched and thought “yes, this seems real,” says things like “watching that sultry little temptress squeeze into a Canadian tuxedo” and talks about Sweeney's “bouncy little funbags.” At one point, the AI version of the congresswoman claims that “skinny, attractive, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cisgender women descend from the slave-daddy oppressors of this nation.”
And Chris Cuomo, professional news man, looked at this and thought: this is extremely real.
“Nothing about Hamas or people burning jews cars...but Sweeney jeans ad?” he posted on X. “Deserved time on floor of congress? What happened to this party?”
The video had a watermark. It literally said “parody 100% made with AI.” The account that posted it was called MemeRunnerGPT, and the Instagram post included “ChatGPT + AI Art” in the description. Come on, Chris.
AOC's response: “This is a deepfake dude. Please use your critical thinking skills. At this point you're just reposting Facebook memes and calling it journalism.”
After deleting his post (which stayed up for hours, by the way), Cuomo offered this masterpiece of an apology: “You are correct...that was a deepfake (but it really does sound like you). Thank you for correcting. But now to the central claim: show me you calling on hamas to surrender or addressing the bombing of a car in st louis belonging to the idf american soldier?...dude?”
On his NewsNation show, Cuomo sort of admitted his mistake, saying, “They got me. AI. It was really good, and it did seem like something she would say, but it wasn't her.” Then he spent the rest of the segment attacking AOC for not condemning Hamas enough, because when you've been pantsed by a chatbot, the mature response is definitely to double down on your political grievances.
The thing is, even if you knew absolutely nothing about AI or deepfakes, the content itself should've been the giveaway. Since when does AOC talk about anyone's “bouncy little funbags” on the House floor? When has any member of Congress used the phrase “sultry little temptress” in an official capacity? But Cuomo's desire to own the libs was apparently so overwhelming that his brain just shut off completely.
Here's what makes Cuomo's faceplant even more ridiculous. That Sydney Sweeney jeans ad controversy he was so eager to weaponize? That was mostly fake, absolutely manufactured, too. I wrote about this last week. Check that out.
So Cuomo didn't just fall for fake content. He fell for fake content about a fake controversy. Layers upon layers of unreality, like a nesting doll made of bullshit.
Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic nailed this whole phenomenon. Nobody's actually talking to each other anymore. Everyone's just making statements that become fodder for someone else's statement. It's not discourse, it's just people shouting past each other for engagement.
Cuomo wanted to believe it. He needed AOC to be wasting congressional time commenting on Sydney Sweeney or whatever. He needed the Democrats to be the crazy ones obsessing over a jeans ad instead of serious issues. His confirmation bias was so strong it overrode the part of his brain that should've noticed all the red flags signaling that the video was fake.
American Eagle's stock went up 24% through all this, by the way. They got exactly what they wanted. And they didn't even have to orchestrate the controversy. The outrage machine has gotten so efficient it's started generating its own fuel. Completely self-sustaining.
No, it doesn’t it say something about society that it could be real
After getting called out, Cuomo did what every person who falls for obvious fake content does. He made it worse.
“You are correct...that was a deepfake (but it really does sound like you),” he wrote in response to AOC.
This is exactly what Christina Pushaw did back in 2022 when she shared a fake Washington Post article about a homophobic dog. She posted a screenshot of a completely fabricated story claiming Taylor Lorenz wrote about Whitney Chewston, a dachshund who'd become a meme. When people pointed out the article didn't exist, her defenders rushed in with the classic: Well, doesn't it say something about the media that this was believable?
Like then, I will again say that no, it does not say something about society or the media or whatever that it could be real.
Joe Rogan does this constantly. He'll invent a story, get mad about it, find out it's fake, then somehow still be mad because the fact he could imagine it means something profound. There's literally a webcomic about this exact phenomenon because it happens so often. Person believes fake thing, gets corrected, insists their gullibility is actually society's fault.
The “but it really does sound like you” might be the most telling part. No, Chris, it doesn't sound like her. But in Cuomo's mind, this insane parody was indistinguishable from reality because his brain’s been marinating in Twitter so long that he genuinely can't tell the difference anymore.
Journalists have to do better
We've got a problem when the people who are supposed to be checking facts can't spot fakes that literally announce themselves.
And it's only getting worse. The AI that fooled Cuomo had obvious tells. Bad lip-syncing, ridiculous dialogue, a giant watermark. But the tech's improving every day. Soon the fakes won't announce themselves. They'll be perfect recreations of real people saying plausible things that never happened.
What then? If Cuomo can't spot a fake that's practically waving a flag saying “I'M FAKE,” how's he going to handle the sophisticated stuff? How's any journalist who prioritizes partisan point-scoring over basic verification?
The answer is they won't. They'll share whatever makes them feel vindicated, whatever confirms their priors, whatever gets engagement. And when they get caught, they'll blame society, or Democrats, or the concept of objective truth itself. Anything but themselves.
There is also very loud misogyny in the “sounds like you” because Alexandria is incredibly intelligent and consistently speaks with restraints and decorum on the house floor (precisely bc she knows certain people expect a younger woman of color to be a dummy!)
he's always been a big, dumb lug. his gushing hand-offs to Lemon were always embarrassing. and saying this obvious fake sounds like AOC underlines again his leading quality: the big dumb. he thinks she talks like Marj Greene or Lauren Boebert—he doesn't even know AOC is smart. that's how dumb he is.