Video of armed Chinese robots is AI-generated
- Published on August 25, 2025 at 10:43
- 4 min read
- By Anne CHAN, AFP Hong Kong
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"Rehearsal for mainland China's September 3 military parade. Rehearsal for the robot troops. Absolutely stunning!" reads the traditional Chinese caption of a Facebook video shared on August 18, 2025.
The video, which appears to have been lifted from TikTok, shows a parade of armed robots marching in unison before crowds of onlookers.
It surfaced ahead of a planned military parade in Beijing on September 3, with officials saying China will unveil a slate of new domestically produced military hardware that will showcase its "powerful capability to prevail in modern war" (archived link).
The event, marking 80 years since the end of World War II, will see President Xi Jinping inspect troops in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and other world leaders expected to attend.
Millions of Chinese people were killed during a prolonged war with imperial Japan in the 1930s and 40s, which became part of a global conflict following Tokyo's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The ruling Communist Party has held a series of blockbuster events in recent years to commemorate its wartime resistance.
The video was also shared in similar TikTok and Bilibili posts.
"The US army will have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). After growing up watching The Terminator, they need to fight against the terminators," read a comment on one of the posts.
Another said: "It's so exciting. Absolutely awesome."
The circulating video, however, was generated using AI and does not show a rehearsal for the September 3 military parade.
'AI-generated'
A keyword search using "pubg481097" -- the TikTok handle watermark seen on the falsely shared video -- led to a higher-quality version posted on TikTok on July 10 (archived link).
Chinese text in the TikTok video's top-left corner reads: "Sci-fi scenes are fictional and based on imagined events tens of years into the future."
The video's description also includes a label reading "AI-generated", which TikTok says may be applied automatically to content it has identified as "completely or significantly edited with AI" (archived link).
"This may happen when a creator uses TikTok AI effects or uploads AI-generated content that was made on certain platforms," it adds.
Another indicator the video is AI-generated is the supposed Chinese text on banners in the video's background that is nonsensical.
The crowds watching the parade also appear unnaturally still and some members of the audience have unnaturally long limbs.
A separate reverse image search on Baidu led to a similar video posted on Bilibili on July 6, titled "September 3 Military Parade: A vision for the 2035 parade commemorating the 90th anniversary of Victory Day" (archived link).
The Bilibili video is superimposed with the logo of state broadcaster CCTV in the top left corner and a banner across the top that describes the footage as showing the "2035 Victory Day military parade".
Its simplified Chinese caption reads: "I created this video using AI, envisioning the emergence of more powerful high-tech equipment in our motherland ten years later."
The video was earlier debunked by Taiwan Factcheck Center (archived link).
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