AI-generated videos shared as real visuals of new mutated animals
Recently, a video (here and here) of what looks like a new creature with the body of a seal/dolphin and a cow’s head has gone viral on social media. Many similar videos (here, here, and here) of amphibious creatures that look like a mix of sea and land animals are doing the rounds on social media. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows a sea creature that has a head of a cow.
Fact: This is an AI-generated video. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
Firstly, we checked online if there was any credible information about spotting such a weird creature. This search did not yield any credible reports. This is unusual because if a creature like this had been discovered and filmed by people, it would have made headlines.
Also, we did not find any other video of the same creature from different angles. In the video, we can see many people gathering in the background of the creature, and it is hard to believe that none of them have recorded the same from their angles and posted it on the web.
Subsequently, with a suspicion that the viral video was created using either VFX or AI, we examined the footage closely. We found a few anomalies, which are generally found (here, here, and here) in AI-generated content. If one looks closely, one of the people wearing green boots can be seen walking in the background. He/she walks from the left of the frame to the centre. As they walk, another leg appears adjacent to their boot out of nowhere, which cannot happen in real life. You can see the same in the following graphic.
Similarly, a person’s shoes look conjoined in another video(here) of a fish with a tiger’s skin and head.
After these videos have gained traction, many social media users have expressed suspicion of their authenticity. An ‘X’ user named ‘Arojinle,’ who is a wildlife researcher, posted these videos, calling them fake.
We also found a few posts on which a text in Mandarin Chinese appeared that translates to ‘AI-generated for entertainment only.’
We then ran a few screenshots of the viral video through the ‘Hugging Face’s’ Maybe AI-content detector and found that it is 98% artificial.
We also found a few Facebook profiles of ‘Digital Creators’ who posted many such videos of mutated animals, which you can see here and here. With all of this evidence, we can safely conclude that videos generated using text to video AI tools are being falsely shared as real videos of weird and strange animals.
To sum up, AI-generated video is being shared as real visuals of mutated animal species.