Viral videos are circulating on Facebook (FB) allegedly showing actual footage taken when a powerful earthquake struck Thailand. These are fake and generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
Uploaded as early as April 4, at least two videos published by the same FB user are making the rounds on local social media spaces. Both videos bear the caption: “Pray for Thailand”
Claiming that these videos were supposedly of a “recent earthquake [incident] in Thailand,” they showed a huge earth fissure running through an urban street in ruins and a tall building violently shaking and falling apart.
A cursory online search revealed that these videos were AI-generated, not real footage.
Last month, Instagram page bestonly.ai published the two videos generated by AI tool Invideo AI. The tool’s watermark can be seen at the top left portion of the original videos.
The watermark was cropped in the spurious videos, misleading viewers into thinking the footage is legitimate. Not content with uploading fake videos, the publisher insisted under the comment section that their videos were not made using AI and told people to “go read the news.”
While a 7.7-magnitude earthquake indeed hit Thailand and Myanmar and claimed thousands of lives last month, the fact is that these videos were AI-manipulated. VERA Files Fact Check spotted some red flags in the two videos indicating AI use:
FB page Chris And Jasmin (created on May 23, 2020) published the two videos, collectively garnering over 27,200 reactions, 4,000 comments, 4,500 shares and 10,4 million views. The videos were also reposted by one Filipino FB user and YouTube channels Viral blogs and Mari sumali-an.
