What was claimed
Video shows dinghies overturned in the English Channel, including one where more than 100 people are believed to have died.
our verdict
These videos are not real and were created using artificial intelligence. There are no reports of the recent deaths of 100 people attempting to cross the English Channel in small boats.
A video that has been liked thousands of times on Facebook purports to show a dinghy overturned in the English Channel.
One such video claims more than 100 people lost their lives in a single railroad crossing, while another claims 23 people are “at risk of missing.”
However, these videos are not real and are created by artificial intelligence. And sadly, while six people died trying to cross the Channel in April, there are no reports of 100 people dying at once (although dinghies can sometimes carry that many people).
According to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, there will be 24 confirmed deaths related to Channel crossings in 2025.
When we ran the videos through Google’s large-scale language model (LLM) Gemini, we found that all videos had a SynthID watermark on both the audio and visual components, indicating they were generated or modified by Google AI.
There are many other clues that it was created by AI, such as blurred cliffs in the background and glitches with ocean debris.
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We are increasingly fact-checking AI-generated videos. Earlier this week, we fact-checked a similar AI-generated video that appeared to show Australian border forces at sea.
Before sharing such clips, first consider whether they come from verifiable and trustworthy sources. Our guide to identifying AI content and our toolkit on how to identify malicious information can help you do this.
