How to spot · VIDEO

How to spot an AI video

A year or two ago an AI video was easy to spot. That is no longer true. The best clips now pass at a glance, especially on a phone. But moving pictures are far harder to fake than still ones, and a few habits catch most of them.

Check how long it is

Most AI video tools make short clips, often between five and twenty seconds. A real event filmed on a phone usually has a rough start, some wobble and a messy end. If a dramatic clip is very short, starts at exactly the right moment and stops before anything else happens, be suspicious.

Watch it more than once, and pause it

AI video tends to look right frame by frame and go wrong in between. Play the clip slowly, or tap pause again and again, and watch for these:

• Things that change shape: a hand that gains a finger, a bag that becomes part of a coat, a car that loses a wheel.
• People who merge or vanish: watch anyone who walks behind something. Do they come out the other side as the same person?
• Writing that swims: signs, number plates and shirt logos that shift between frames.
• Weightless movement: feet that slide, water that moves like syrup, objects that fall too slowly or bounce the wrong way.
• A camera that is too smooth: a gliding, drone-like move in a scene that someone supposedly filmed in a panic.

Listen as well as look

Sound is often added afterwards. Listen for voices that do not match lip movement, screams and crashes that sound like stock effects, and background noise that never changes when the picture does. Plenty of AI clips have no natural sound at all, only music.

Look for a label, but do not rely on one

Some AI video tools add a visible watermark or attach hidden information saying how the clip was made. That helps when it is there. But a watermark can be cropped out and hidden information is usually lost when a clip is saved and posted again, so a missing label proves nothing.

Find the first upload

This is the check that settles it most often. Take a screenshot of a clear frame and run it through a reverse image search, or search a few words describing the clip together with the name of the platform. Look for the earliest copy. Clips made for fun are often posted first by an account that says plainly what it does. By the time the clip reaches you, that caption has been stripped away.

What this cannot tell you

Real footage can look wrong too. Heavy compression smears detail, phone cameras smooth faces, and unusual lenses bend straight lines. A strange-looking clip is a reason to check where it came from, not a verdict.