Claim: Videos circulating online show a reporter covering Pakistan in conflict with its neighbouring countries.
Fact: The two clips were created using Sora, an AI generation software by OpenAI.
On 4 November, a Facebook user posted a video purportedly showing a journalist wearing a press jacket, covering Pakistan’s conflict with a neighbouring country. A closer look at their profile picture suggests that the clip apparently features the user himself wearing a press jacket.
The clip begins with him saying, “Pakistan’s war has started. I am currently near the border.” He then falls to the ground as an explosion occurs in the background but eventually continues to say:
“I’m near the border, you can see behind me, the gun is going off, the smoke is rising, there’s gunfire coming from all directions around us, there’s an attack, get down, we’ve been targeted too, we’re taking cover right now, everyone, let’s go quickly towards Pakistan, we are crossing the border and Pakistan…”
The same user posted another similar video, purportedly showing him at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as the conflict between the two countries was underway at the time of the post on 12 October.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check analysed both videos and found that they were generated using Sora, a software by OpenAI.
Video 1 (archive): This video has all the tell-tale signs of AI-generated content, and a visible watermark declares that Sora AI was used in creating this clip.
At 0:10, text that seems to be gibberish, resembling the Urdu script, appears above the word “Pakistan”, a tell-tale sign that it was generated by AI as it often struggles to create coherent text.
Text that appears to be gibberish.
The “Sora” logo appears throughout the footage, confirming that this AI-generated software was used in its creation. Sora is a text-to-video AI model launched by OpenAI last year.
According to a statement/guideline on the company’s website, every clip generated with Sora carries provenance signals, including a watermark and C2PA metadata, both of which help users authenticate media by tracing videos back to the software with “high accuracy”.
Furthermore, running the clip through deepfake detection tools confirms that it is AI-generated. One such tool is Deepfake-O-Meter, an initiative of the University of Buffalo, which uses various algorithms to determine whether a video is real or fake. Seven out of twelve algorithms returned probabilities above 50%, indicating that it is a deepfake, as shown below:
Deepfake-O-Meter results for the first clip.
Further analysis with AI detection tools, including Zhuque AI Detection Assistant and Hive Moderation, also confirms that the clip is AI-generated. Both returned probabilities of 100% and 99.9%, respectively. The results are shown below:
Zhuque AI Detection Assistant’s result for the first clip.
Hive Moderation’s result for the clip.
Soch Fact Check thus confirms the clip is AI-generated.
Video 2 (archive): This video was generated using Sora AI software.
A Sora logo appears throughout the footage, confirming that this AI model was used in its creation, similar to the first video.
An analysis of the video using AI-detection tools also confirms that the clip is AI-generated. Zhuque AI Detection returned a probability of 73.02%, indicating it is likely AI-generated. Hive Moderation gave a total score of 99.9%, which confirms that “the video is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content”. The results for this clip are shown below:
Results by Zhuque AI Detection Assistant.
Results by Hive Moderation for the video.
A further analysis of the Facebook account shows that this user has uploaded several videos generated with Sora, purportedly showing Pakistan in conflict with India, with Afghanistan here, and other clips of conflict here and here.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that both videos are AI-generated and do not represent factual events.
Virality
The first clip garnered 2.3 million views, received 49,800 views, and was shared 1,900 times.
The second clip garnered 1.2 million views, was liked 8,700 times, and was reshared 193 times.
Conclusion: Both videos in question are AI-generated and were created using Sora.
Background image in cover photo: IMS
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