Clip of tigers wading through floods in Malaysia is AI-generated

"Tigers enter a village near Hulu Terengganu. Worrying about the flood situation. Hope all is well," reads a Malay-language TikTok post shared on November 24. The clip has been viewed more than 15 million times.

The post surfaced after widespread flooding hit several Malaysian states as rain intensified with tropical storm Senyar (archived here and here).

Flooding in Terengganu has forced 11,000 residents to evacuate to more than 500 temporary relief centres across eight districts (archived link).

Across the country, at least two people have been killed (archived link).

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on December 4, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The video was shared in similar posts on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. It also surfaced in Indonesia where devastating floods have killed at least 950 people, many in Sumatra's northern Aceh province (archived here and here).

Comments under the posts suggest many social media users were misled, with some worrying about the supposed sighting of tigers.

"If it's true, this is dangerous," one said in Malaysia. Another comment written in Indonesian said: "I want to help, but I'm afraid to be eaten."

However, reverse image searches on Google led to a Facebook post sharing similar visuals of tigers in floodwaters, including a still image matching the circulating video, with the caption "Warning: this is an AI video, just for entertainment" (archived link).

A closer analysis of the footage shows it contains visual inconsistencies characteristic of content generated with AI.

A person appears to be filming the tigers with a mobile phone, but the animals do not appear on the screen of the device even when it is angled toward them.

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Screenshots from the falsely shared video, with the visual errors highlighted by AFP

Moreover, as the two tigers move through the floodwaters, the surface barely ripples, and the water appears oddly pristine.

The water level also appears inconsistent; floodwaters appear to be high on some houses while the bodies of the animals remain above the water.

Despite the meteoric advancements in generative AI, visual inconsistencies such as these are telltale signs of inauthentic visuals.

The Hive Moderator AI detector tool also found the video was 99.9 percent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content" (archived link).

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Screenshot of the Hive Moderator tool results, taken December 8, 2025

Loo Kean Seong, a director at the Terengganu Department of Wildlife and National Parks, dismissed the rumours and told  AFP on December 3 that the video was generated using AI.

There have been no official reports of tiger sightings near residential neighbourhoods in Indonesia.

AFP has debunked other AI visuals falsely linked to floods across Southeast Asia.