Video of Volodymyr Zelensky kneeling before Saudi officials is AI-generated
- Published on April 8, 2025 at 10:50
- 4 min read
- By AFP Thailand
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"Even if we were to starve, we would be content under such leadership. He will never sell out his country," reads the Burmese caption of a Facebook video posted on March 13, 2025.
The video, which has been viewed more than 150,000 times, shows Zelensky shaking hands with a Saudi official before he appears to drop to his knees in supplication.
Overlaid text on the video reads, "Some kneeling is necessary for success, humility yields good results."
The video circulated after Ukrainian and US officials held crunch talks in Saudi Arabia over ending the war with Russia (archived link).
Kyiv endorsed an American proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and agreed to immediate negotiations with Russia during the talks in Jeddah, prompting US President Donald Trump's administration to lift a freeze on military aid and to predict the end of the three-year conflict.
The agreement was reached despite Trump and Zelensky clashing in the White House weeks earlier, with the US president and Vice President JD Vance accusing the wartime leader of disrespect and ingratitude (archived link).
The same video purportedly showing Zelensky kneeling down to his Saudi hosts were also shared in similar posts on Facebook and TikTok.
"He really loves his country," read a comment on one of the posts. Another read: "I respect and pity him a lot."
The video, however, was generated by AI.
Watermark and visual errors
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to similar footage captured of Zelensky arriving in Jeddah on May 19, 2023 to attend an Arab League summit.
Video of Zelensky arriving in Jeddah, posted by AFP on YouTube, shows him shaking his hosts' hands and then getting into a waiting car (archived link). Zelensky does not kneel down before he gets into the vehicle.
Experts told AFP that a watermark for Hailuo AI in the falsely shared video's bottom-right corner and other visual errors are signs it was generated by AI (archived link).
Shu Hu, head of the Purdue Machine Learning and Media Forensics Lab at Purdue University, told AFP on March 28 the video is "obviously manipulated", pointing out that an officer standing in the background does not appear to be casting a shadow (archived link).
Siwei Lyu, director of the University at Buffalo's Media Forensics Lab, also told AFP that after running an analysis their algorithms determined the video is "highly likely" to have been created by AI models (archived link).
"Some artefacts are still noticeable -- for example, the face and hands appear to fade, and the direction of the wind affecting the clothing is inconsistent," he said on March 31.
He added the video was generated by Hailuo AI "using a real image sourced online for image-to-video generation".
Keyword searches on Google led to several similar images of Zelensky arriving in Jeddah in May 2023, including a photo released by the Ukrainian president's press office and distributed by US news agency UPI (archived link).
The war in Ukraine has generated a wave of misinformation, some of which AFP has debunked here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
