Claim Nigel Farage streamed himself playing Minecraft is False

Nigel Farage has gained significant media coverage during the election, with his Reform Party gaining ground on the Conservatives in opinion polls. 

A widely-shared video on TikTok allegedly showed Farage streaming himself playing Minecraft, and destroying Keir Starmer’s castle base in the sandbox-style video game. 

Nigel Farage streamed himself playing Minecraft and destroying Keir Starmer’s base.

Ferret Fact Service is working with YoungScot to get to the truth behind election claims suggested by young people. 

We looked at this claim and found it False

Evidence

The video, titled “Nigel griefs Kiers minecraft base” shows Farage playing the game Minecraft while streaming himself on screen. It has nearly 80,000 likes and 25,000 shares on TikTok. 

‘Griefing’ is a term used in the gaming world for someone who intentionally trolls and annoys other players in multiplayer online games. 

Farage appears to say he had previously “logged on to Rishi ’s Minecraft server and managed to find and destroy his house,” the subject of an earlier satirical video by the same account. The video goes on to show him blowing up part of Keir Starmer’s castle base on the game. The video then cuts to Keir Starmer streaming, reacting to an explosion in his base and blaming it on Rishi Sunak. 

The video has been created using artificial intelligence to manipulate videos of Farage and Starmer so it appears as though they are saying words produced by an AI audio generator. 

The account that posted the video has numerous others with similar content, including AI-created videos of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak playing Minecraft. 

The videos are labelled as satire by the account, but numerous comments suggested viewers appeared to believe it was real. 

How to spot AI fakes?

There are a few telltale signs this is fake. Firstly, it’s incredibly unlikely. There are no original sources of the pair playing Minecraft on any streaming site beyond this clip and others on the same account. 

Nigel Farage’s video seems to have been taken from an appearance on the radio station LBC, and a microphone from the station is visible. 

The way his mouth moves in line with the audio is slightly unusual, and appears to be unnatural. 

AI audio is getting more common and it is very easy to create realistic audio of people who often appear in the public eye, like politicians, because audio material of them speaking, which is used to train the AI, will be publicly available. 

Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have been regularly used in fake AI audio before, such as a clip of Starmer allegedly criticising the city of Liverpool.

Ferret Fact Service verdict: False

This video has been skillfully created using artificial intelligence to replicate Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer’s voices and likeness. It is intended to be satirical, imagining what it would be like if party leaders were streaming playing Minecraft.

This fact check was written on the suggestion of Young Scot, a national youth information and citizenship charity for 11 to 25 year olds living in Scotland. This collaboration aims to engage with and hear from young Scots, particularly focusing on the interests and concerns of young voters.

Ferret Fact Service (FFS) is a non-partisan fact checker, and signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network fact-checkers’ code of principles.

All the sources used in our checks are publicly available and the FFS fact-checking methodology can be viewed here.

Want to suggest a fact check?

Email us at factcheck@theferret.scot or join our Facebook group.

Main image: Gage Skidmore