CGI video falsely shared as Cyclone Biparjoy barrelling towards India in June 2023

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 27, 2023 at 09:33
2 min read
By Uzair RIZVI, AFP India

As Cyclone Biparjoy pummelled the Indian coastline in June 2023, computer-generated footage of a tornado above the sea surfaced in Facebook and Twitter posts falsely linking it to the storm. The clip was in fact posted on YouTube in August 2022 by a channel that regularly shares edited videos. The channel's creator confirmed to AFP that the clip was made using CGI. There were also no reports of a waterspout before Biparjoy made landfall in India and Pakistan.

"Scary video of Cyclone Biparjoy moving towards Kutch, Gujarat," reads a tweet posted on June 15.

More than 180,000 people in the Indian state of Gujarat and Pakistan's neighbouring Sindh province fled the path of Biparjoy -- which means "disaster" in Bengali -- before it made landfall on June 15 (archived link).

The cyclone pummelled the Indian coastline and there were two confirmed deaths in Bhavnagar district, the Gujarat state government said.

The tweet features a video appearing to show a large tornado moving over the ocean.

Screenshot of a tweet sharing the CGI-generated footage, taken on June 22, 2023.

The video was shared in similar posts falsely linking it to Cylone Biparjoy, including here and here on Twitter and here on Facebook.

Computer-generated imagery

A Google reverse image search found the video posted on YouTube on August 9, 2022 -- many months before Biparjoy made landfall.

The clip was published on a channel called "rtsarovvideo", whose description says it posts "Severe Weather and Natural Disasters Best Edits and Real Videos".

The video is titled: "Superior Tornado at the horizon" (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and posted on YouTube (right):

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the video on the channel rtsarovvideo (right)

The channel's owner, Slava Rostyslav confirmed the footage showed CGI.

"I upload real and edited (CGI) videos about the weather, mostly cyclones, typhoons, tornados, thunderstorms, volcanoes, eruptions and etc," he told AFP on June 20.

"This is a CGI video."

Other CGI videos, including a clip of a "tornado" sucking up dollar bills, can be found on his YouTube channel here, here, and here (archived links here, here and here).

Furthermore, there were no reports of a waterspout -- a mini-tornado out at sea -- in relation to Biparjoy (archived link).

AFP has debunked another video falsely linked to the cyclone.

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