“Watch your step, sir, keep moving, ” a police officer wearing a vest labeled ICE and a patch marked “POICE” says to a Latino-looking man dressed in a Walmart employee vest. He guides him toward a bus that reads “IMMIGRATION AND CERS. ” Beside him, one of his coworkers walks in a strangely sideways manner, one leg oddly passing through the other as he moves toward the back of a line of other Latino Walmart employees apparently detained by ICE. The video shows two American flag emojis and the word “Deportation” overlaid. The video has amassed 4 million views, 16, 600 likes, 1, 900 comments, and 2, 200 shares on Facebook. It was, of course, created using OpenAI's Sora. Some comments seem to notice this: “Why is he walking like that?” one asks. “AI, the guy’s foot goes through his leg, ” another points out. Yet many do not: “Oh, you’ll find lots of them at Walmart, ” says a top comment. “Walmart doesn’t do paperwork before they hire you?” another questions.

“They removing zombies from Walmart before Halloween?” another writes. The newest trend in Facebook’s ongoing decline into the AI content abyss is AI-generated deportation videos. These are posted by an account named “USA Journey 897” and resemble actual propaganda videos from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s social media pages. Many of these AI videos depict workplace deportations, while some echo terrifying, real footage from ICE raids in Chicago and Los Angeles. Chad Loder, an independent researcher, initially flagged the account to 404 Media. All the videos feature text placed over three areas where OpenAI’s Sora video generator typically applies watermarks. This, along with the style of the videos and 404 Media’s own tests creating similar videos, confirms they were made using Sora. This highlights how tools from some of the world’s wealthiest companies are being combined to produce and profit from videos exploiting human suffering—and how easily a Sora watermark can be concealed.