ZDF broadcasts AI-generated video without labelling in heute journal report on ICE operations
On 16 February 2026, ZDF's news programme 'heute journal' broadcast a report on US border police ICE operations that included a video sequence generated by OpenAI's Sora AI, without labelling it as AI-generated. The broadcaster initially described the omission as a 'technical error' and later removed the AI material from the report, apologising for the mistake. The report also included a real video from 2022 that was used out of context.
- Date it happened
- 2026-02-16
- Organisation involved
- ZDF
- Product, system or model
- Sora
This incident was imported from heise.de. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.