Back in 2021, former president Donald Trump’s most rabid supporters tried to claim this video of him (lightly) condemning those involved in the January 6 attacks on the capitol was actually an advanced deepfake. In the video Trump, who just days before encouraged those same rioters to try and upend the 2020 election, claimed he was “outraged” at his supporters who “defiled the seat of American democracy.”

Mixed messages, to say the least, but the video was not deepfaked. Still, some supporters refused to believe Trump’s statements and claimed perceived discrepancies in the former president’s hair color or his head movement proved the video was a fake. It wasn’t.

AI researchers and misinformation experts have, for years, warned deepfakes, or inaccurate claims of deepfakes, could have devastating consequences for democracy. In the West African country Gabon, such false claims have already helped spark a coup d’etat. In 2018, the country’s ailing president Ali Bongo Ondimba returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia after reportedly experiencing a health issue. Ondimba didn’t make public appearances for weeks which led to an outpouring of rumors speculating about the severity of his ailment. Critics started claiming the few images released showing Ondimba in public were actually body doubles.

When Ondimba finally addressed the public in a much anticipated New Year’s Eve statement, some rushed to claim it was the result of deepfake technology. Viewers said his unusual facial expressions, which were likely the result of him suffering a stroke, were actually signs of digital manipulation. Already frustrated political opponents used the deepfake argument as a justification to take action and reclaim political power. Within days, armed soldiers from ​​Gabon’s elite Republican Guard took control of a radio station and called on the public to “Rise up as one and take control of the street.”

Raffaela Spone, a Pennsylvania woman who earned the moniker “deepfake cheerleader mom” for allegedly using manipulated images to cyberbully teenage girls, was in fact wrongly accused. Prosecutors had originally alleged Spone, a 50-year-old mother of a cheerleader, had sent doctored images of other teen girls using a vape pen, drinking, and using drugs, to the team’s coach in an effort to get them booted off the squad. The teens reportedly appeared nude in some of the images. Prosecutors at the time alleged Spone had scoured through the teens’ social media profiles and used deepfake tech to doctor the images. The problem is, those accusations were false.

Around a month after the charges were announced (and after just about every news site covered the case) prosecutors embarrassingly released a statement admitting there wasn’t any evidence the media in question was falsified. Digital forensic experts speaking with the Washington Posts said the images in question were, in fact, “blatantly authentic.” But maybe don’t shed a tear for Spone too soon. Though she may not have used deepfake she did still reportedly harass then teen even telling one to “kill yourself.”

In 2020, as cities around the US and the world rumbled with the roar of protesters demanding justice for recently killed George Floyd, one Missouri Republican candidate was claiming the now infamous video depicting his death was a deepfake. Winnie Heartstrong, who was running to take over a house seat near St. Louis released a conspiracy-laden, bonkers 23-page document where she claimed those involved in the video showing Floyd’s death were actually “digital composites of two or more real people to form completely new digital persons using deepfake technology.”

The bizarre document falsely alleged Floyd died long before the video in question was taken. It also erroneously claimed Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison for a second-degree murder charge, was actually Cash Cab host Ben Bailey.

In the waning days of his term, former President Donald Trump found himself on the receiving end of possibly one of the oddest deepfake adjacent allegations. Trump posted this video of himself giving a speech on the White House lawn and almost immediate commenters flooded the internet to devise a conspiracy theory. Trump, they alleged, wasn’t in front of a lawn at all, but was in a studio with a green screen.

The grainy quality plus seemingly off, loop-like movements of the trees in the background convinced some Trump was up to something suspicious. Political commentators, including major figures like MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, ran with the idea and amplified the greenscreen conspiracy. In reality, digital forensics experts speaking with BuzzFeed at the time said there was a much simpler solution: the video was just heavily compressed.