Does a video show how a carriage ride in New York was ruined when the carriage horse blasted two ladies with several high-velocity streams of loose manure? No, that's not true. The video is not real. There are several AI flaws in the video. There are also practical errors in the way the horse is harnessed and the carriage is configured -- notably there is no coachman driving the horse.
The video appeared in a post (archived here) published on Oct. 17, 2025 on X by @bagshaw2112. It is captioned:
Go to love a trip around #Newyork very refreshing 😆😆😆😳😳😳🙈🙈🙈 💩 ☔️
This is a screenshot still of the video:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/bagshaw2112/status/1979183840024265181.)
The video has the Instagram watermark of @realnicogs, where the video was posted on Oct. 15, 2025. This account has posted a steady stream of AI-generated themes; with children approaching dangerous animals, people with boulders on glass bridges, and a trypophobic (fear of hole clusters) nightmare of a man with holes in his face.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot from instagram.com/realnicogs/.)
AI detection tools at InVID and Hive Moderation were unable to produce a reading from the Instagram video, but there are flaws which give clues that this video is AI-generated. At one point the woman on the left takes hold of the lapel of her friend's blue coat and the handful of blue fabric stays in her hand when she moves away (circled below). Another anomaly occurs in the street ahead of the horse, where a black square in the distance, perhaps a traffic light, transforms in space and seems to become a floating three dimensional beam about to fly over their heads.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot markup from instagram.com/realnicogs/reel/DP1tU3zD4Un.)
The carriage in the video (pictured above) is an improbable confabulation. From a practical standpoint, it has no driver and no dashboard. On either side of the horse's flanks there should be wooden poles called shafts- there are none, only one leather trace and the two driving lines that no one is holding. The shafts prevent the carriage from running into the horse when it stops and also connect to the turning gear of the carriage -- allowing the driver to steer. This setup as pictured would not function at all.
The carriages used in New York City have three seats (pictured below). The driver's seat, with a backrest, faces front, and the two passenger seats in the back face each other. There is a dashboard in front of the driver which would block the passenger's view of the back end of the horse. Every carriage horse in New York City is required to be outfitted with a manure catcher.
(Image Source: stock photo unsplash.com/photos/a-horse-drawn-carriage-traveling-down-a-street-l1lF8pZFr_c.)
