No, the Viral Nafisa Fai Flag Video Isn't a Deepfake — the Story Calling It Fake Just Got Retracted

On October 16, the Oregon Journalism Project (OJP) interviewed Fai about the clip; afterward, a 'campaign supporter' gave OJP a screenshot showing the flag right-side up ^[2][3]. OJP published a story on October 19 calling the viral video a 'deepfake,' and Axios Portland ran its own version the same news cycle, relying mainly on OJP's reporting ^[3]. Fai shared the story on X, writing that AI 'can attempt to interfere with political campaigns' ^[3].

Online users quickly challenged the challenge: they noted the 'corrective' screenshot was missing the Somali TV Minnesota station bug, had a different name-banner than the original broadcast, and showed a flag star-field that didn't match — and some claimed to find an AI watermark embedded in it ^[3]. The image OJP used to call the real video fake increasingly looked fake itself.

On October 20, KATU ran its own check: it pulled archived Google-cached photos of Fai and other speakers at the same podium, all showing the flag upside down, plus an archived thumbnail of a since-deleted YouTube upload of the event showing the same orientation ^[2]. KATU asked Fai's campaign to explain the discrepancies; it didn't respond by deadline. Fai herself told KATU only, 'Everything my team and I received is everything that's been circulating online. We didn't produce or approve anything' ^[2].

On October 21, OJP unpublished its story, stating it had obtained new images showing the flag 'had in fact been upside down' at the Minneapolis event, and that it 'regrets the error' ^[2][3]. Axios removed its piece as well, acknowledging it had relied chiefly on OJP's now-retracted reporting ^[3].

Right-leaning accounts and outlets, including The Post Millennial, are now using the retraction to accuse mainstream outlets of relying on an AI-generated image to clear a Democratic-aligned candidate ^[3]. The same news cycle has now produced two competing 'deepfake' accusations, and only the second one has held up.

Meanwhile, the public Resemble.ai 'Deepfake Incident Database' still lists the viral video itself — not the screenshot — as the confirmed deepfake, citing OJP's original, since-retracted October 19 story as its sole source ^[4]. That entry hasn't been updated to reflect the retraction, which shows how a single retracted local story can keep circulating as 'verified' in secondary catalogs long after the newsroom that wrote it backed away ^[4].

The dispute lands inside a genuinely close, high-stakes race: Fai and Treece are headed to a November 2026 runoff for Washington County chair after finishing within roughly 130 votes of each other in the May primary ^[5].

FALSE: the viral video of Nafisa Fai is not a deepfake. The underlying footage from the October 10 Minneapolis event is authentic, and independent evidence — archived Google-cached photos and a deleted YouTube thumbnail — corroborates that the flag behind her was genuinely displayed upside down ^[2].

What's unverified, and plausibly fabricated, is the single 'corrective' screenshot showing the flag right-side-up — the one piece of evidence the original 'deepfake' story rested on, which the outlet that published it disowned within 48 hours ^[2][3]. No forensic, third-party analysis of either image has been published by a neutral examiner, but the weight of the independently corroborated evidence favors the simpler explanation: the flag was upside down, and no deepfake of Fai has been verified at all ^[2].