A video shared thousands of times on social media appears to show Mark Zuckerberg claiming that “there is no water left for humans to survive more than one year”.
This is false. The audio in this clip is fake and has been made using artificial intelligence (AI).
The original footage comes from a dinner held at the White House by President Trump in September 2025, with tech CEOs including Mr Zuckerberg.
Mr Zuckerberg gives a general introduction to the group, and makes no mention of water shortages.
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The video was modified using ‘voice cloning’
Dr Dominic Lees, an Associate Professor in Filmmaking and convenor of the University of Reading’s Synthetic Media Research Network, told us that “the Facebook clip has been modified by creating a voice clone of Mark Zuckerberg, combined with the use of a lip syncing AI tool”.
Voice clones can be difficult to spot, as lip syncing AI technology can make the footage appear convincingly genuine. Dr Lees said detecting such manipulations can be especially difficult with low resolution clips. However, as is often the case with AI-modified material, looking for inconsistencies can help reveal the audio is fake.
He said: “The first test is to listen closely to the audio. The Facebook clip has a background resonance differing from that of the White House dinner room that we hear on the PBS news original footage, and a faint music track has been added to the manipulated clip in order to hide the inconsistencies of the voice clone.”
The manipulated video is being circulated across other social media accounts and encourages viewers to purchase ‘World Water Reserve’ cryptocurrency. The clip ends with fake audio of Mr Zuckerberg continuing: “So we will absolutely be supporting the World Water Reserve with a $200 billion capital allocation in September.” Mr Zuckerberg never made such a commitment in the original video.
The post also includes a screenshot of CNBC’s report of the dinner, with a caption reading: “Zuckerberg announces $200M commitment to World Water Reserve.”
The caption is not accurate and we could find no evidence CNBC ever reported this. It was added to a real photo published by CNBC in April, and by CBS News when first reporting on the dinner. Neither of the real captions made any mention of the ‘World Water Reserve’.
The post also shows a genuine article based on a report from August 2026, which discusses water quality and availability, while predicting what water shortages might look like by the year 2100.
Before sharing content like this online, it’s important to consider whether it is real or not. Our Full Fact toolkit and guides on how to spot AI-generated audio, images and deepfake videos can help you do this.
Full disclosure: Mark Zuckerberg is the founder, chairman and CEO of Meta. We receive funding from Meta as part of our work with the company’s Third-Party Fact Checking Programme. We disclose all funding we receive over £5,000; you can see these figures here. Our funders have no input into our editorial content.
