Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on several social media platforms. The video featured several people looting cash from the streets. It also showcased a vehicle overturned on the streets.
It was claimed, along with the video, that the incident took place on a highway in Uttar Pradesh. During the investigation, we found that the video is AI-generated and the incident did not occur.
Claim:
Instagram user Anokhelal Vishwakarma shared the video on his profile with a false claim.
Other users are also sharing the same video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by observing the video. It was noticed that faces in the video were not clearly visible, and neither were the vehicles or their number plates.
We also checked for news reports to see if this incident was covered by any media organisation. We did not find any news reports about the same.
We then downloaded the video to run it through AI detection tools.
HIVE Moderation suggested that the video is AI-generated. The result stated that overall, the video is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.
We also ran the screenshots from the video through some detectors, which suggested that these were created using AI.
Conclusion: The viral video showing people looting cash on the highway is AI-generated. The video and the claim are fake.
