Fact Check: 'Freedom Nuggets': Rumor Says Walmart Is Selling Great Value Chicken Nuggets Shaped Like Guns. Here's the Truth

Claim:

Image shows a real Walmart product called "Freedom Nuggets," consisting of chicken nuggets shaped like tiny pistols.

Rating:

On May 20, 2024, a Snopes reader emailed us asking if it was true Walmart was selling pistol-shaped chicken nuggets named "Great Value Freedom Nuggets." The reader included a screenshot of a post from a Facebook page named Things that are not aesthetic.

Our fact checks often revolve around the questionable authenticity of various online images, such as one purported picture we previously reported about claiming to show a photo of a massive "Nephilim giant" under the government's watch.

As for "Freedom Nuggets," a search of Facebook found several reposts about the purported chicken-nugget product. Users shared one particular May 18 repost more than 18,000 times.

However, as we've noted at the top of this fact check with our "Fake" rating, the image of "Great Value Freedom Nuggets" was not real. According to Walmart.com, Walmart does not sell any chicken nuggets shaped like firearms.

An online user simply created the viral picture with an artificial-intelligence tool. Readers may have noticed several of the numbers and letters did not appear clearly in the image. For example, the picture included one misspelling ("Freeedom"), as well as strange numerals in the prices below the packages of chicken nuggets. AI-created images sometimes contain these "tells" in the form of strange-looking letters and numbers.

The creator of the "Freedom Nuggets" image appeared to be a Facebook user named Chris Torres. He posted the image in the Cursed AI Facebook group on May 16.

Torres' other posts in the Cursed AI Facebook group featured another AI-created image of "Great Value Liberty Nuggets" in the shape of bullets. The packaging read, "Party like it's 1776."

A different post from Torres featured an AI-created picture of two dinosaurs and a baby shopping in Walmart for "Great Value Hooman Nuggets" – chicken nuggets in the shape of human babies.

For further reading, Snopes recommends our article, "4 Tips for Spotting AI-Generated Pics."

Sources:

Emery, David, and Jessica Lee. "4 Tips for Spotting AI-Generated Pics." Snopes, 16 Apr. 2023, https://www.snopes.com//articles/464595/artificial-intelligence-media-literacy/.

Torres, Chris. "Dino Nuggets Ain't Cutting It? Check out Freedom Nuggets!" Facebook, Cursed AI, 16 May 2024, https://www.facebook.com/groups/cursedaiwtf/posts/1542193463055798.