Hurricane Melissa AI video is widely circulating onlinePublished October 28th 11:04 GMT
Paul Brown and Shayan Sardarizadeh
Examining BBC senior journalists
As Hurricane Melissa approaches Jamaica, many dramatic videos created with artificial intelligence are being shared online.
We have observed dozens of such videos on TikTok, with a total of millions of views. If you search for Hurricane Melissa on the platform, you’ll see many older clips that are AI-generated or from past storms. Some videos have a watermark indicating they were created with an AI generator, such as Open AI’s text video model Sora.
Others removed or blurred watermarks in an apparent attempt to mislead viewers, featured fake reporters, or combined short clips that appeared to be legitimate reporting from local sources.
In one video, which has been viewed 500,000 times on TikTok, a woman films two sharks swimming across a flooded street from her balcony.
You can see a blurry symbol at the bottom left of the clip, which is probably a hidden watermark. The uploader then added a label to the caption indicating that the video was created by AI.
image source, TikTokOne dramatic clip, which has been viewed 2.6 million times, shows what appears to be the eye of the storm taken from a nearby airliner.
“The moment I realized the clouds swirling below me weren’t just clouds, they were a hurricane,” the caption reads.
However, the video is not real and was posted by a user with a history of sharing fake clips of natural disasters. The clip appears to resemble actual footage shot on Monday by U.S. Air Force Reserve members known as “hurricane hunters.”
Another clip shows a group of men running for safety as huge waves come ashore near the shore. A small VEO watermark appears in the bottom right corner, letting you know that the video was created using Google’s Text Video Generator.
According to a report by AFP on Monday,, externalTikTok recently removed more than 20 AI videos about hurricanes. However, fake clips continue to circulate widely on the platform.
BBC Verify has contacted TikTok for comment.
