AI clip of rats jumping from truck falsely tied to hantavirus
- Published on May 14, 2026 at 19:26
- 3 min read
- By AFP USA, AFP Canada
With fears bubbling over the May 2026 outbreak of the deadly hantavirus on a cruise ship, a video depicting dozens of rats jumping out of a moving truck is swirling online in social media posts claiming it shows the intentional spread of the rodent-borne disease. But the clip is fabricated -- likely generated by OpenAI's Sora 2 -- and a similar clip was circulating online as early as March, an AFP analysis found.
"Dashcam catches dozens of RATS exploding out of a hole in a semi-trailer at highway speed like a horror movie," says a May 10 post on X.
"Deliberate release? Population control? Or something worse... hantavirus carriers being dropped into cities? WHO literally warned about this."
The video shows a semi-truck driving down a highway. The rear of the trailer has a hole cut into it, out of which dozens of giant rats are seen pouring onto the road, moving in a single-file line at rapid speed.
The same clip circulated in various languages across platforms including X, Reddit and Instagram as an outbreak on a cruise ship sailing the Atlantic Ocean focused attention on the rare disease.
Hantavirus is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva. The Andes strain, which spread onboard the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius cruise ship and resulted in the deaths of three passengers, is the only known variant to pass between humans.
The World Health Organization has warned that more cases could still emerge following the evacuation of all the ship's passengers, but it stressed there "is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak."
Among the living, eight people have been confirmed to have hantavirus, including a French woman in critical condition.
The scare led to an online surge in conspiracy theories alleging the outbreak was part of a planned epidemic or depopulation campaign, echoing the baseless narratives that flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The clip of rats jumping out of a moving truck also has no basis in reality.
An AI detection tool pointed to the use of the artificial intelligence, and AFP identified visual irregularities typical of the technology.
Synthetic content
An analysis by the Hive Moderation AI detection tool found that the video was "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content" and assessed that it stemmed from OpenAI's prompt-to-video generator Sora 2 (archived here).
Further analysis of keyframes from the video revealed visual inconsistencies indicative of synthetic content.
For example, the rats' large size -- on par with the truck's wheels -- and the robotic nature of their jumps out of the truck in a single-file line point to the inauthenticity of the images.
Similarly, some freeze frames show distortions, including rodents with two tails or abnormally long tails and legs.
Reverse image searches additionally retrieved a similar iteration of the clip published March 11 on TikTok by a self-described "digital creator" whose page shares mostly satirical and synthetic imagery.
The original caption of the post, in Ukrainian, does not make any mention of a hantavirus outbreak. AFP contacted the account owner for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
AFP has previously debunked other fabricated and misleading claims about hantavirus.
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