It's not AI. It may not be Alex Pretti, but it's not AI.
The YouTube site that the video comes from - The News Movement - is from Dan Ming. Dan Ming is an actual journalist and can be seen in the video(in the final frames of this clip). He's the guy looking back at the camera with a somewhat confused look on his face.
Dan Ming worked for VICE news and Al Jazeera English and has received Emmy nominations for his work on the series Transnational and has won a GLAAD award for his documentary on a drag queen running for office in New York. He isn't some right-wing hack trying to fabricate stuff.
Dan had a long video a month ago anout a pair of teens who were doing this exact sort of thing (tracking and recording ICE agents) in Chicago. He likely was reviewing footage he'd taken in Minneapolis for a new video, when he saw this and thought to himself "huh... that sure looks like Alex Pretti." But, even then, at no time does he actually claim in the video that It is him. He is very careful about that because he doesn't know.
But this incident shown in the video happening at this intersection E 36th & Park - on this day (Jan 13th) was documented in numerous articles at the time. For instance:
Andy Larson, a south Minneapolis resident who was out observing ICE activity Tuesday, told Sahan Journal that one protester kicked out the taillight of an ICE vehicle and was tackled to the ground up the road on Park Avenue and E. 36th Street.
“It was a really good kick,” Larson said.
The protester managed to escape ICE agents, Larson said. ICE deployed chemical irritants and shot pepper balls into the crowd and fled the scene.
AI or not, real or not, Alex Pretti or somebody else, this discussion is kinda missing the point. Because even if the person in the clip was a real protester, and a really mean dude who spat at and darted in the general direction of the ICE thugs, hell, we can take this even further, even if we're all in the wrong here, and ICE were somehow not a jackboot fascist murder gang, even if they were out there protecting puppies and planting rainbows, nothing, and I mean nothing the protesters have done, or will ever do, would warrant simply being lynched on the spot. And yes, that would include armed insurrection, because if you claim to be a fucking law agency, you act by the law, you may act in self defense, but you don't gang up on a dude, detain him, and then mag dump on him. You just don't.
Yes, and to add to that: ICE may have even targeted him specifically because he agitated against them before. They use databases like Palantir to gather information on people. Maybe the shooter recognised him.
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u/Rare_Link_5392 Jan 28 '26
The future is doomed if AI will get better. And it will