A claim spreading on social media went viral, saying that video recorded by MSNBC that was shown of large crowds at Boston during Saturday's "No Kings" protest were videos from a 2017 rally.

But through BBC and other independent verification, the videos were found to be authentic and there is evidence that it was filmed on October 18, 2025, at those protests.

This confusion was sparked when Grok, Elon Musk’s social media platform X’s AI chatbot, falsely claimed that aerial footage aired by MSNBC was archived video from a past event.

The speculation spread online with quick force, echoed by right wing pundits and accounts endorsing the legacy of the President Donald Trump, some of whom claimed that the size of the protest was being inflated using dated images.

BBC Verify reporter Thomas Copeland fact-checked the footage and debunked the false claims, and identified the image as taken during Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstration in Boston.

After conducting reverse image searches and cross-referencing with footage from local media outlets, BBC concluded that no versions of the image existed online before the protest on October 18.

"Grok has once again misled X users by falsely claiming that this viral video of crowds at yesterday's "No Kings" protest in Boston... But Grok's assertion is incorrect. He exact same aerial view of the crowd can be seen in multiple other videos of the protest in Boston posted by local news outlets yesterday," BBC Verify’s Shayan Sardarizadeh ...