Does a viral video authentically show several cruise ships dumping raw sewage into the sea using huge pipes? No, that's not true: According to several AI detection tools the video was generated using artificial intelligence. It also contains several tell-tale signs of AI generation such as elements that blend into each other and bizarre features on the pipelines themselves.
An example of the viral video (archived here) appeared on March 19, 2025 on TikTok with a caption that read:
What Is being dumped Into the ocean? #ocean #ship #cruiseship
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sun May 18 10:15:58 2025 UTC)
AI detection tool Hive said it was 99.3% likely the video contained AI-generated or deepfake content.
The Media Forensics Lab at State University of New York/Buffalo operates DeepFake-O-Meter, which offers a variety of image, video and audio analysis tools. Several of their tools also found traces of AI in the clip:
Several clues in the image also revealed it was generated using AI, for example a pipe with a balustrade sticking out of it, a random small ship seemingly tied up to the raging sewage pipe, a radar dome seemingly growing from a floating pipeline, a line in the sky that seems to morph into a ship with a balustrade on top and some very odd cables and wires connected in strange ways to another pipe.
(Image: collage made by Lead Stories)
French fact checking website Les Surligneurs also looked into this video here.
