The viral video claiming to show a Pakistani helicopter airlifting a downed Indian fighter jet is AI-generated

Following the 22 April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack, India launched Operation Sindoor, escalating tensions along the Line of Control (LoC). Both sides reported intensified cross-border firing and armed forces operations, leading to military and civilian casualties (here, here, and here). After days of attacks from both sides, diplomatic backchannels led to a ceasefire agreement through high-level military and diplomatic talks.

Amidst the ongoing military tensions between India and Pakistan, a video is going viral on social media (here, here, and here)  claiming to show a Pakistani helicopter airlifting an Indian fighter jet that was allegedly shot down by Pakistan. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.

The archived post can be found here.

Claim: The video shows a Pakistani helicopter airlifting an Indian fighter jet that was shot down by Pakistan.

Fact: This video showing visuals of a crashed fighter jet being lifted by a helicopter is AI-generated, It was uploaded on 03 May 2025, before the start of ‘Operation Sindoor’. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

Upon close observation, we found discrepancies in the viral video, prompting suspicion that it might have been generated using AI. To gather more information, we conducted a reverse image search of the key frames, which led us to the same video uploaded on a YouTube channel on 03 May 2025, three days before ‘Operation Sindoor’. In that video, it is described as an AI-generated scene showing a crashed fighter jet being lifted by a helicopter.

We then ran the video through the Hive AI detection tool, which indicated that the video is likely AI-generated, with an aggregate score of 76%.  

We also noticed that the channel features several other AI-generated videos depicting fighter jets and cars being lifted by helicopters (here, here, here, and here).

To sum up,  the viral video claiming to show a Pakistani helicopter airlifting a downed Indian fighter jet is AI-generated.