Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms. In the video a man was seen offering azaan on a damaged mosque on a flooded street. Some social media posts claimed that the video belonged to the recent floods in Assam.
Since a month devastating floods in Assam have claimed over 100 lives and affected thousands of people. Triggered initially by torrential rainfall and an upstream cloudburst in late July, the situation remains critical with 433 villages still inundated and large swaths of agricultural cropland destroyed.
During the investigation we found that the video was AI-generated and not real or recent.
Claim:
Facebook page “The Live Tv सच सबसे आगे” shared the video on their page with a false claim.
Other users are also sharing the same video with similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by observing the video first. The video appeared to have some discrepancies. For example the man who offered azaan did not seem to lose balance. This suggested that the video could be AI-generated.
We then downloaded the video and ran it through Google’s SynthID.
SynthID is a tool to watermark and identify AI-generated content, helping to foster transparency and trust in generative AI.
The SynthID detector confirmed that the video was made with Google AI (video).
We also ran the video through another AI content detector, HIVE Moderation.
The tool also confirmed that the viral video is AI-generated.
Conclusion: The viral video claiming to show a man offering azaan from a damaged mosque during the recent Assam floods is AI-generated and not a real recording of the floods. The viral video is fake.
