Video shows police chasing person in pickle costume?

In early October 2025, a video shared widely across social media purportedly showed police officers chasing after a person wearing a pickle costume.

The footage, which appeared to be recorded from the perspective of a helicopter or drone covering the chase, appeared on YouTube (archived), Instagram (archived) and Reddit (archived), while one X user who posted it wrote (archived): “Trump’s America, where giant frogs intimidate ICE agents and giant pickles give cops a run for their money.”

(X / TikToke user @policebodycam6741)

Throughout October, numerous photos and videos of people resisting or confronting law enforcement while wearing costumes had been popping up online. For example, people were spotted wearing inflatable frog costumes in front of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers in Portland, Oregon, amid protests against U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

Such demonstrations intensified after the president sought to send members of the National Guard to the city, which he described as “war-ravaged” (archived), an interpretation that, according to ABC News and CNN respectively, Portland’s police chief and residents contested (archived, archived).

In this instance, the video of police chasing someone in a pickle costume was not real. It was wholly generated by artificial intelligence software.

Telltale AI signs

The footage featured a watermark for Sora — an advanced artificial intelligence model that generates video and audio from user prompts — that flashed periodically across the screen. OpenAI, an AI research and development company, launched Sora 2 on Sept. 30, 2025, after which a flood of AI-generated footage spilled across social media networks. In a news release that day, OpenAI said all outputs on its platform would “carry a visible watermark” to distinguish it as AI content (archived).

The clip also included a watermark for a TikTok channel (archived) that posted the most widely viewed version of the video. The channel’s post (archived) was, as of this writing, age restricted and not viewable for all users; however, the original video could be seen as the pinned post in an archived version of the channel’s profile.

The TikTok user regularly posted fake footage of confrontations between law enforcement officers and people in food costumes or, in some cases, literal food people (archived). One clip even showed what looked like follow-up footage of the pickle police chase (archived). The videos consistently included the Sora watermark flashing over them.

There was also visual evidence the video in question was AI-generated. For example, the back door on the right side of the moving police car closed despite there being no visible arm or other mechanism pulling it shut. Similarly, the front door on the passenger’s side of the vehicle opened despite the arm of the officer who exited it not being near where a door handle would usually be located.

Additionally, the right leg of the person in the pickle costume occasionally turned from green to a pale skin color, or at times even completely disappeared.

For further reading, Snopes debunked another fake video that originated as a Sora creation. The footage purportedly showed a protester being pepper-sprayed by a soldier who referred to himself as “Sergeant Pepper.”