A video of flood waters hitting a street has been shared thousands of times online with captions implying it shows the recent flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border. But it isn’t real and was made with artificial intelligence.
The video contains an invisible SynthID watermark, indicating it was generated with Google AI.
The video shows a large wave of water destroying houses and sweeping away cars. Although there have been numerous videos showing real footage of the flood, which has killed over 1,000 people, this particular video isn’t real.
As well as the SynthID watermark there are a number of visual clues it’s a fake. Red containers and motorbikes suddenly appear and disappear, and people seem to be walking towards the wave.
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We increasingly find ourselves fact checking AI-generated videos. Before sharing clips such as these, first consider whether they come from a verifiable and trustworthy source. Our guide to spotting AI content, and toolkit on how to identify misleading information, can help you do this.
