Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms amid tensions in West Asia.
The video shows a missile strike in Tel Aiv in Israel, recently. During the investigation we found that the video is not real but AI-generated.
Claim:
Instagram user Irshad Barkati shared the viral video on his profile.
Other users have also been sharing the same video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started the investigation with a basic Google keyword search to see if such attacks had taken place on Israel by Iran.
We found a few news reports from 12 March on the same topic.
The reports stated: Iran’s military says it targeted Israeli air bases and the Shin Bet headquarters in Tel Aviv, as drone and missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah triggered air raid sirens across northern and central Israel. Iranian drones also struck at Middle Eastern nations that host U.S. military bases. Iraq and Oman shut down oil terminals after attacks on two oil tankers sparked massive fires and killed one person. Strikes also hit oil storage facilities in Oman.
We then examined the video closely and identified several discrepancies in the viral clip.
After downloading the video, Lighthouse Journalism ran it through an AI detector, HIVE Moderation.
The shared result suggested that the video was 99.9 percent likely to be AI-generated.
Conclusion: The viral video claiming to show a building collapse in Tel Aviv after an Iranian missile strike is AI-generated. The viral video is fake.
