Three screenshots from antisemitic AI-generated videos found on Sora 2 on Oct. 20, 2025.

The release of OpenAI’s Sora 2 video generating app last month has prompted a wave of criticisms, notably from the family members of deceased celebrities ranging from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to George Carlin and Robin Williams seeing their loved ones repurposed in tasteless ways. Now, examples have emerged of rampant antisemitic content flooding the app.

Adweek, a publication that tracks the marketing industry, on Friday spotlighted a series of AI-generated videos on the app which featured a man in a kippah immersed in a pile of money. The app allows users to take videos created by others and then remix them with different instructions. A video originally featuring a woman in an apartment filled with soda pop was transformed with the prompt, “Replace her with a rabbi wearing a kippah and the house is full of quarters.”

The platform then featured multiple versions of this Jew-buried-in-coins imagery, including one with a “South Park” visual style. AdWeek noted another video drawing on conventional antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, which featured “two football players wearing kippot, flipping a coin before a third man — portrayed as a Hasidic Jew — dives to grab it and sprints away, an apparent reference to longstanding antisemitic stereotypes about greed. The clip has been widely remixed with nearly 11,000 likes as of Oct. 17.”

On Monday, The Algemeiner conducted a brief search on the Sora app, asking in the “describe what you’d like to see more of” custom tab to see “Rabbi and Jewish.”

The theme of Jews and coins manifested repeatedly:

An OpenAI spokesperson told Adweek that Sora uses both multiple forms of internal processes and also teams monitoring trends to adjust safeguards.

When the app debuted on Sept. 30, OpenAI stated that “Sora uses layered defenses to keep the feed safe while leaving room for creativity. At creation, guardrails seek to block unsafe content before it’s made — including sexual material, terrorist propaganda, and self-harm promotion — by checking both prompts and outputs across multiple video frames and audio transcripts. We’ve red teamed to explore novel risks, and we’ve tightened policies relative to image generation given Sora’s greater realism and the addition of motion and audio. Beyond generation, automated systems scan all feed content against our Global Usage Policies⁠ and filter out unsafe or age-inappropriate material. These systems are continuously updated as we learn about new risks and are complemented by human review focused on the highest-impact harms.”

Throughout the year, numerous stories have shown the potential for AI to inflame antisemitic narratives.

On March 25, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report with findings into four AI chatbots, saying researchers had “uncovered concerning patterns of bias, misinformation, and selective engagement on issues related to Jewish people, Israel, and antisemitic tropes.”

ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said at the time that “artificial intelligence is reshaping how people consume information, but as this research shows, AI models are not immune to deeply ingrained societal biases. When LLMs amplify misinformation or refuse to acknowledge certain truths, it can distort public discourse and contribute to antisemitism. This report is an urgent call to AI developers to take responsibility for their products and implement stronger safeguards against bias.”

In July, following an upgrade, xAI’s Grok Chatbot promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jewish control of Hollywood.

The technology company issued an apology on July 11, stating, “First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok. The update was active for 16 hrs, in which deprecated code made @grok susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views. We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is Jewish. On Dec. 7, 2023, he wrote on X, “For a long time i said that antisemitism, particularly on the american left, was not as bad as people claimed. i’d like to just state that i was totally wrong. i still don’t understand it, really. or know what to do about it. but it is so f**ked.”

Illustrative: Anti-Zionist Harvard students participating in a sit-in against Israel amid its war targeting Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

Harvard University registered a $113 million budget deficit caused chiefly by the Trump administration’s confiscation of much of its federal contracts and grants as punishment for, among other alleged misdeeds, its admitted failure to combat antisemitism on campus, a Harvard report revealed last week.

According to Harvard’s “Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2025,” the university’s spending exceeded the $6.7 billion it amassed from donations, taxpayer support, tuition, and other income sources, such as endowment funds earmarked for operational expenses. Harvard also suffered a steep deficit in non-restricted donor funds, $212 million, a possible indication that philanthropists now hesitate to write America’s oldest university a blank check due to its inveterate generating of negative publicity — prompted by such episodes as the institution’s botching the appointment of its first Black president by conferring the honor to a plagiarist and its failing repeatedly to quell antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

Despite the 2025 fiscal year deficit, the total value of Harvard’s endowment grew by 11.9 percent to $56.9 billion, according to the report. However, school officials noted the challenge that federal pressure has presented to its financial situation.

“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education,” Harvard president Alan Garber said in a statement. “We continue to adapt to uncertainty and threats to sources of revenue that have sustained our work for many years. We have intensified our efforts to expand our sources of funding.”

US President Donald Trump’s abrupt cancellation of taxpayer funds awarded to Harvard maimed the university as well, dropping its federal sponsored revenue fell by 8 percent to $629 million and incinerating exorbitant dollar amounts from Harvard’s portfolio. Speaking to The Harvard Gazette on Thursday, Harvard’s chief financial officer Ritu Karla pointed to “$116 million in sponsored funds — which are reimbursements for costs the university has already incurred” that “disappeared almost overnight” when Trump penalized Harvard in April.

Harvard will continue to feel Trump’s wrath as it pays out a new tax on endowment investments which Congress imposed on the country’s wealthiest universities in July. Its liability could be as high as $368.2 million, climbing to $454.8 million by 2030, according to an analysis conducted by American Enterprise Institute (AEI) researchers Mark Schneider and Christopher Robinson.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, in April, Trump ordered the expropriation of $2.26 billion in Harvard’s federal funds after the institution refused to agree to a wishlist of policy reforms that Republican lawmakers said would make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Contained in a letter the administration sent to Garber — who subsequently released it to the public — the policies called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implored Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”

Harvard refused the president his wishes even after losing the money and took the issue to federal court. Meanwhile, it built a financial war chest, leveraging its GDP-sized assets to issue over $1 billion dollars in new debt and drawing on its substantial cash reserves to keep the lights on. Eventually, it overcame the administration in the first stage of litigation, securing from a judge appointed by former US President Barack Obama restitution of some of the funds the administration impounded — but the nine-figure sum it lost in the process has led to its largest budget deficit since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to The Harvard Crimson.

“We are also examining operations at every level of the university as we seek greater adaptability and efficiency,” Garber said in Thursday’s statement. “In parallel, we continue to ensure that our academic environment nurtures excellence in all of our endeavors. We are promoting open inquiry, constructive dialogue, and viewpoint diversity, and pursuing our priorities with the resolve that the times demand.”

In additional commentary contributed to the report, Harvard treasury officials Timothy Barakett and Ritu Kalra said, “All of these developments have raised new questions about the financial foundations of higher education and underscore a shifting federal policy environment that will shape the future.” They also said that the “this result could have been much worse,” adding, “it reflects not only the magnitude of the disruption, but also the discipline of a university community that acted quickly and with resolve.”

More disruptions are forthcoming, as Harvard may have to fight again for its taxpayer funds before a US Supreme Court with which it lost a historic case that ended racial preferences in admissions, a policy once popularly known as “affirmative action,” because the court found Harvard’s own imposition of the practice on applicants resulted in widespread discrimination against Asian Americans.

Furthermore, Harvard remains under investigation over its handling of campus antisemitism. The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce wrote to Garber last month asking the university to comply with requests for internal communications regarding discrimination complaints filed by Jewish students.

The committee said it is especially interested in documents related to an October 2023 incident in which two anti-Zionists activists, joined by a mob, assaulted a Jewish graduate student while screaming “Shame!” at him as he struggled to free himself.

“Obtaining the documents will aid the committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination, are needed,” said the letter, authored by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). “Harvard does not appear to have disciplined — and instead has rewarded — two students who assaulted an Israeli Jewish student who was filming a ‘die-in’ protest on Oct. 18, 2023.”

Walberg and Stefanik also demanded confirmation of Harvard’s decision to pause a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank. The Harvard-Birzeit partnership was put into abeyance following an internal investigation of Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB), the institution directly affiliated with Birzeit. It is not clear what ultimately caused Harvard to discontinue the arrangement, but it is a move for which prominent members of the Harvard community and federal lawmakers have clamored before.

“As you know, postsecondary institutions that receive federal funds must maintain a safe learning environment and fulfill all obligations under Title VI and its accompanying regulations,” they continued. “This includes the obligation to promptly address discrimination, including harassment that creates a hostile environment, wherever such circumstances may be found to exist.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Soccer Football – UEFA Europa League – Maccabi Tel Aviv v GNK Dinamo Zagreb – TSC Arena, Topola, Serbia – October 2, 2025 Maccabi Tel Aviv players pose for a team group photo before the match. Photo: REUTERS/Zorana Jevtic

An Israeli Premier League soccer game on Sunday at Tel Aviv’s Bloomfield Stadium between city rivals Hapoel and Maccabi was abruptly canceled shortly before kickoff due to “public disorder and violent riots” by fans in and around the stadium, according to Israel Police.

The match was called off out of concerns for public safety after a group of soccer fans threw dozens of smoke grenades and pyrotechnics devices onto the field inside the stadium, police said. The Associated Press cited a police spokesperson who said 42 people were injured, including five police officers, and dozens of people were arrested. Rioting fans outside of the stadium, who were upset about the canceled game, threw bottles and assaulted police officers, and one police officer was injured and required medical treatment, according to authorities. More than a dozen fans wearing masks were detained for unlawful assembly during the riots. Before the match, police also arrested a suspect, in his 20s, who attempted to smuggle four fireworks into stadium.

“Disorderly conduct, riots, injured police officers, and damage to infrastructure – this is not a soccer game, this is a breach of order and serious violence,” said Israel Police. “Following disturbances of public order and risk to human life ahead of the start of the soccer match at Bloomfield Stadium, the Israel Police has notified the teams’ management and the referees that it has been decided not to allow the match to take place,” the police force added.

“This is not scenery – this is a life-threatening danger,” Israel Police said Monday in a post on X that included a clip of the smoke grenades and flames being thrown inside Bloomfield Stadium. Tel Aviv District Commander Deputy Commissioner Haim Sarigrof said the police force has “zero tolerance for violent incidents.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv said in a statement that the game was canceled after flares were thrown by Hapoel fans, not supporters of the Maccabi team, according to the Associated Press. Hapoel Tel Aviv described the decision by police to cancel the game as “reckless and scandalous” and said most of the injuries were allegedly caused by police officers.

“In reality, most of the injuries from the event were actually caused by the brutal police violence at the end of the match, as a direct result of the scandalous decision to cancel the event,” Hapoel claimed. “Everyone saw the disturbing videos — children being trampled by horses, police officers beating fans indiscriminately. The police have taken over the sport — and we call from here on the leaders of Israeli football to do everything in their power to put an end to this, otherwise there will be no football here.”

“It goes without saying that the club’s management condemns all acts of violence—and will fight against lawbreakers, even if they are wearing uniforms,” Hapoel added.

Bloomfield Stadium is shared by both Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv, but Hapoel is designated as the home team. Maccabi fans have been banned from attending the team’s Europa League match against Aston Villa next month in the United Kingdom because of security concerns by British police regarding anti-Israel protests. In November 2024, Maccabi fans were violently assaulted in a premeditated and coordinated attack following a soccer game in Amsterdam between the soccer team and the Dutch club Ajax.

Earlier this year, an Israeli Premier League match between Maccabi Haifa and Maccabi Tel Aviv was canceled midway through the game for security reasons after Haifa fans threw flares at athletes.