Claim:
A video that circulated in October 2025 authentically depicted hordes of people rioting and looting Walmart because the government cut off food stamps.
Rating:
Context
The video featured a watermark for Sora, OpenAI’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) video generator. It also featured audio and visual quirks typical of AI-generated videos.
A video circulated on social media in late October 2025 allegedly depicting hordes of people storming Walmart and stealing items because the government “cut off the food stamps.”
The video spread after speculation that the government might not issue Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in November 2025 as a result of the federal government shutdown that started on Oct. 1, 2025. In late October 2025, a pop-up appeared on the USDA website (archived) indicating that SNAP benefits would not be issued in November 2025.
Internet users reposted the video on social media platforms including TikTok (archived) and X (archived). They all traced back to one TikTok post (archived) that had over 2 million views as of this writing and appeared to be the original. The post’s caption read in part: “Government shutdown, no Food Stamps in November, people about to be like.”
Government shutdown, no Food Stamps in November, people about to be like 😭🤣😂
Searching Google for “Walmart looting government shutdown” found no reports on the matter from credible sources. The video’s caption seemed to imply that its content was speculative and not actual fact. The video also featured a watermark for Sora, OpenAI’s advanced artificial-intelligence (AI) video generator, indicating that it was fabricated. As such, we have rated the video fake.
OpenAI released the first version of Sora in December 2024. Its latest model, Sora 2, is even better at producing convincing AI-generated videos, making it harder for internet users to differentiate real from fake. To combat misinformation, Sora 2 videos feature information that distinguish them as AI-generated — including the Sora watermark that appears in the circulating video.
AI video generation models are still not perfect, so most generated videos include visual and audio quirks. For example, the text on the Walmart products in the video was incoherent and seemed to squiggle when the camera moves. Physics and spatial logic were sometimes inconsistent in Sora videos, like when someone reached through the glass on a sliding door around the TikTok’s 0:06 mark.
The TikTok account that posted the video, @alrightna_kay, featured several other videos with Sora watermarks and displayed clear signs of being AI-generated. We reached out to @alrightna_kay via TikTok to ask for more information about the video’s origins and will update the story if we receive a response.
For further reading, Snopes investigated a video of a man in a pickle costume running from the police that also featured the Sora watermark.
