On June 24, 2026, consecutive earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 collapsed neighboring areas of Venezuela. However, a video claiming that one building in the country is shaking violently without collapsing is a hoax generated by artificial intelligence and has been circulating online since late 2025.
“Awesome!!!! Prayers for Venezuela,” reads a June 28, 2026 post that shared the clip on X.
The visual spread across X and also appeared on Facebook and YouTube, reading “Earthquake cctv.”
Screenshot of X taken on July 1, 2026 (with AI logo added by AFP)
The video went viral after powerful twin earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24, destroying buildings and raising the death toll as rescuers scrambled to find survivors trapped under rubble.
Tens of thousands of people were still missing, and by July 1, most of the collapsed buildings in the worst-hit city of La Guaira had been marked with the letter “D” for “dead” and signs indicating that although they had been searched, no signs of life had been found.
The quake may have damaged or destroyed 58,870 buildings, according to a preliminary assessment of satellite data released by NASA.
However, the footage of the building shaking back and forth has nothing to do with the shaking and is a fabrication.
A reverse image search showed the same video on TikTok, posted on December 15, 2025, more than six months before the earthquake in Venezuela (archived here). The clip also has a timestamp of “2025/12/15”.
The caption reads: “Earthquake cctv #cctv #earthquake #japan #austrila.”
TikTok screenshot taken on July 2, 2026 (with AI logo added by AFP)
This account’s page contains many videos that TikTok or its creators have labeled as containing AI-generated media (archived here).
The InVid-WeVerify toolkit found evidence that various keyframes in the supposed earthquake video were synthetic, and the Hive Moderation AI detection tool found that parts of the video itself were generated by AI.
The clip also shows some visual anomalies typical of AI-generated content, such as unreadable text that resembles Chinese or Korean on signs and road signs, and inconsistent spacing between different crosswalks at intersections.
Although the footage is purported to be from a surveillance camera, the video does not show the camera itself shaking, and while other buildings and pylons are shaking violently, the adjacent convenience store and cars parked on the street remain motionless.
AFP previously debunked similar posts in both English and Spanish that incorrectly misrepresented the same video as footage of various earthquakes in Japan.
AFP fact-checked other misinformation about Venezuela here.
