Zakariya has worked with magazines, newspapers and news portals. Prior to joining Newschecker, he worked with Network18's Urdu channel. Zakariya completed his Postgraduate studies in Mass Communication and Journalism from Lucknow University.
After studying New Media from ACJ, Chennai, Vasudha noticed the growing problem of misinformation and disinformation online and became interested in separating fact from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals at a micro level. Prior to joining Newschecker's English team, she worked at Latestly.
Pankaj Menon is a Delhi-based fact-checker who enjoys “digital sleuthing” and debunking misinformation. He holds a Masters in International Relations from the University of Madras and has previously worked for online organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle.
The video shows a newly discovered animal species, the cow-faced seal.
Newschecker received the video on its WhatsApp tip line (+91-9999499044) seeking fact checking.
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A Google search for the keywords “cow-faced seal” did not yield any reliable reports of sightings of such a marine creature.
After that, when I searched for the keyframes of this video in Google Lens, the user “King EfrenWe used a VPN to access the site, and the post featured the same video of the purported new species of seal.
A quick look at the account revealed several videos featuring non-existent animal species, including a fish with a pig's face, a fish with a tiger's face, and a dog with a chicken's face. Notably, in the comments section of these posts, several users praised the user's editing skills.
Newschecker has reached out to TikTok user King.Efren and will update the article once we receive his comment.
We then contacted the Deepfake Analysis Unit (DAU) of the Misinformation Alliance (MCA), of which NewsChecker is a member, to find out more about the video. We were told that existing AI detection tools can only recognize human faces. However, we discovered that the footage was created using the Prompto2 AI generator.
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Additionally, a three-legged person can be seen in the background, and another video of a similar animal was also found, with a clear disclaimer that it was generated using AI.
We also Deepfake Detector The website noted that the footage was “likely to be a deepfake.”
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Therefore, the video does not feature any real animal species, but was created using AI tools.
Result: False
source
TikTok Poster King Efren
DAU Analysis
News Checker Analysis
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Zakariya has worked with magazines, newspapers and news portals. Prior to joining Newschecker, he worked with Network18's Urdu channel. Zakariya completed his Postgraduate studies in Mass Communication and Journalism from Lucknow University.
After studying New Media from ACJ, Chennai, Vasudha noticed the growing problem of misinformation and disinformation online and became interested in separating fact from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals at a micro level. Prior to joining Newschecker's English team, she worked at Latestly.
Pankaj Menon is a Delhi-based fact-checker who enjoys being a “digital detective” and uncovering misinformation. He holds a Masters in International Relations from the University of Madras and has previously worked for online organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle.
