AI-generated video of hail misleads online
- Published on November 17, 2025 at 06:04
- 2 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Canada is home to "hailstorm alley", a region in the western Alberta province that sees more than 40 hailstorms every summer, but a video dated October 31, 2025 showing boulder-sized hunks of ice falling from the sky is in fact AI-generated. The clip contains visual inconsistencies and has been labelled as generated using AI tools by TikTok. There were no official reports of hail in the Alberta region on that date.
"Nature's fury: Massive hailstones, some weighing 50 kilograms, in Canada. One hailstone weighed 200 kgs. This is nature's wrath," reads a Hindi Facebook post shared on October 31, 2025.
The video includes English-language sticker text reading, "31-10-2025 Kansas today" and Hindi-language text reading "God's fury on Canada". It is unclear if the post is referring to a community called Canada in the US state of Kansas, or the country of Canada.
The clip racked up more than 67,000 views and shows boulder-sized chunks of ice bouncing off houses and cars.
The video appeared in similar posts on Facebook and Instagram, where users left comments indicating they believed the footage showed a real storm.
One user wrote, "This natural disaster is a consequence of climate change."
"There is still time to save the planet; otherwise these events will happen all over the world," another commented.
Canada's western Alberta province, home to an area called "hailstorm alley" was left with a 200 kilometre (125 mile) long "scar" after an August 20 storm pelted the ground with ice chunks five to seven centimetres (two to three inches) in diameter (archived link).
Meanwhile, hail was also reported in parts of the midwestern US state of Kansas on September 3 (archived link).
However, neither region reported hail on October 31, 2025 as claimed in the circulating posts, which shared an AI-generated video.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found the video was shared on October 27, 2025 on TikTok, where it was labelled "AI-generated" (archived link).
According to TikTok's guidelines, the label means the content "was either entirely AI-generated or significantly AI-edited" (archived link).
The TikTok account sharing the video, "br_ai_ded", has repeatedly shared AI-generated footage of similar natural calamities.
Analysis of the footage also found visual inconsistencies indicative of AI-generated content. Despite the size of the "hail" smashing into the car and surrounding buildings, no damage can be seen after the chunks bounce off the surfaces.
AFP has previously debunked AI-generated visuals of natural calamities here and here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
