An artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video that claims to show a donkey running through the chambers of Pakistan's parliament while it is in session has gone viral on social media, with many users believing it to be real.
BOOM found that the viral did not show the actual incident at all. Multiple AI detection tools have confirmed that the video is synthetic.
claim
The viral clip was posted by the X-handle @RealBababanaras with the sarcastic caption: “Look: A donkey just stormed into Pakistan's parliament…Opposition or ruling party? It's hard to tell.”
Click here to see the post and here to see the archive.
The Free Press Journal, Republic World and News 18 Hindi misreported the AI video, claiming it showed an actual incident during the session of Pakistan's Senate and calling it a security flaw. News18 Hindi later deleted the article.
what we found
Viral videos are generated by AI: I looked for news reports to support this video, but couldn't find any. I also noticed that there was a problem with the donkey's frame that caused it to go in and out of view. Inspired by this, we tested the videos with AI detection tools like Hive Moderation and Deepfake-o-meter to verify their authenticity.
Hive Moderation flagged this video as potentially containing AI-generated or deepfake content, with a total score of 98.3%.
We also tested the video against several parameters of the Deepfake-o-meter, an AI detection tool developed by the Media Forensics Institute at the University at Buffalo, New York. Deepfake-o-meter test results also showed that the video was generated using artificial intelligence.
