The video, which shows a man in a small boat brandishing a machete and throwing documents into the sea, has been shared thousands of times online, including by Susan Hall, leader of London’s Conservative Party.
But it’s not real, it’s edited by artificial intelligence (AI).
The video, which has gone viral on Facebook, Instagram and X, was shared with captions such as: “Illegal migrant boat boasts ‘this is the end of Britain’ just before landing on UK shores from France with giant knife in hand.”
On June 30, GB News posted a video of what appeared to be the same person but without a machete, claiming it showed a “small boat migrant” throwing his passport into the English Channel and shouting “England is over”. We have not reviewed the footage posted by GB News.
However, the version with a machete is fake. The first version I could find online was posted on July 1st. The man at the beginning of the clip looks very similar to the man in the video posted by GB News, but there are some clues that the machete version is not the real thing.
In the GB News video, the man wears a top with distinct Aztec patterns across the arms and shoulders. However, in the machete clip, the patterned material near the man’s shoulders appears to bulge, while the rest of the shirt sleeve is plain black with no pattern.
About 3 seconds into the fake version, when the man turns to throw the document, the machete momentarily disappears and the man’s hands are free. Then suddenly the machete reappears in his hand. This kind of glitch is common in AI-generated videos.
Dr. Shiwei Liu, a digital media forensics expert at the State University of New York at Buffalo, also said the machete footage was “an AI-generated video, likely created by frames of the original source video via an image-to-video generator.”
“This conclusion is supported by automated AI detection tools and high probability scores derived from key visual artifacts such as fused fingers, unnaturally deforming machetes, suddenly disappearing paper, and floating background objects,” he said.
We contacted Hall about the post where she shared the fake video, which has since been deleted. She had not responded at the time of writing, but told the Standard: “I didn’t realize it was AI. Years after it was done, someone said it might be AI, so I deleted it.”
Before engaging with such content found online, it is important to consider whether it comes from a reliable and verifiable source. Our disinformation toolkit includes tips on how to do this, as well as a guide to spotting fake AI.
