That Viral Video Of LeBron James Traveling From Half Court Is Totally Fake

Have you seen that video of LeBron James clearly traveling—taking six steps without dribbling the basketball—before a slam dunk? The video has been viewed over 2.7 million times. But it’s completely fake.

“That time LeBron didn’t travel,” the Twitter account that first shared the video tweeted sarcastically on March 22.

But from there, the video spread through retweets that allow people on Twitter to create their own captions, helping the video get seen by almost 3 million people in recent days.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins tweeted on Monday that it was the “first deepfake that actually got me” and it really does look real. Deepfakes are videos that more typically allow people to make videos that show celebrities saying things they didn’t actually say.

It’s not immediately clear how the fake video was created, but there are a number of tools available online that allow for the altering of videos. It’s also possible to simply delete frames from video using basic editing software like iMovie, though it doesn’t look like that’s what happened here.

Ben Chase, who works for the Florida Gators, tweeted the original video, which shows James dribbling the basketball before dunking it. The real video has only been viewed by 17,000 people on Twitter at the time of this writing.

Fake images on the internet have been a problem for many years, with people often using Photoshop to manipulate photos in an effort to fool people. Sometimes images don’t even need to be manipulated to spread misinformation, like when images simply have an inaccurate or misleading caption.

But artificial intelligence tools like Midjourney have completely changed the game in recent months, allowing people to easily create new images of things like Donald Trump getting arrested or Pope Francis wearing a big puffy coat.

Former president Trump even recently shared a fake image of himself praying on Truth Social without noting that the image isn’t real. Trump has a history of using fake images though, like the time he altered at least three images in 2019 to make himself look thinner and even make his fingers longer. Seriously.

Again, it’s not clear how the fake LeBron James video was created, but the video isn’t real and we’re likely to see plenty more fakes in the next few years—especially as we get closer to the 2024 presidential election. Obviously the stakes are much lower when videos involve old basketball games than when people are voting. But it’s a great reminder that internet users have to be constantly skeptical of the videos and photos they’re seeing these days. The web has become an incredibly efficient tool for spreading fake images.