Does a real video show a body-armor-wearing riot policeman smiling as he pepper-sprays a woman confronting him at a protest? No, that's not true: The video is labeled "Sora" with watermarks indicating it was created using OpenAI's text-to-video app. It originated on an account devoted to improbable wild animal videos, also labeled as Sora productions. Sora creates fake but "hyperreal" video and audio from users' text prompts.
The video was posted with a November 2, 2025 X post (archived here) where it was published by the @gyaigyimii account with text that read:
I didn't see this coming
Here's what the video looked like on X at the time this fact check was written:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X post on account @gyaigyimii.)
Clearly visible are two watermarks that read SORAREELSS.
That's the name of an Instagram account where the pepper-spraying section of the video was posted November 1, 2025. The account makes clear the Sora connection in its logo, which appears on the "About this account" tab and looks like this:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of account transparency page at www.instagram.com/sorareelss.)
That account features short reels of fake scenes such as an American bison (archived here) tearing the cutoff jeans off a young woman, as the fabric changes color and grows to a bolt of fabric about six feet long:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of bison video from reels library at Instagram account sorareelss.)
In the pepper-spray video, as in the account's other videos, the SORA watermark and label is visible, marked in this screenshot with yellow arrows:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Sorareelss post, with yellow arrows marking the watermarks that read SORAREELSS.)
