Does a real video show an enormous whale breaching near the deck of a ship, swamping the crew with a giant wave? No, that's not true: This video is AI-generated and contains unrealistic glitches in the whale's anatomy, notably the area of ventral grooves on the whale's throat. The detection tool at Hive Moderation determined with 99.9% confidence that the video was AI-generated.
The video was published in a post (archived here) on X by @Naa_Hayo on May 12, 2026. It was captioned:
OMG 😱 😳
This is a screenshot of the video:
(Image source: @Naa_Hayo post on X.)
Lead Stories uploaded the video to the detection tool at Hive Moderation. The video was rated 99.9% likely to have been AI-generated (pictured below).
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
A reverse image search with Google Lens pointed to many duplicate copies of the video but not to a clear source of origin. One copy of the video was published on Instagram by @darkriders_io on Feb. 24, 2026 (archived here). The post's caption (reproduced as written) seems to be an AI-generated description of the scene:
This viral post features an AI-generated video of a massive rogue wave slamming into a cargo ship's deck, where workers in orange suits scramble in panic, but the vessel miraculously stays afloat, amassing over 10 million views in under a day.
The footage, while hyper-realistic, shows telltale AI flaws like striped wave textures and inconsistent lighting, sparking widespread replies calling it fake and underscoring 2026's advancing deepfake tech that fools casual viewers.
, a Japanese content curator focused on news and entertainment, it quotes their earlier clip of a sailor's scream, amplifying shock value to engage audiences on nature's raw power versus human fragility. #explorepage #explore #fyp #technology #knowledge
A glitch visible at five seconds in the video (pictured below) shows the whale's throat covered with ventral grooves seeming to fold over on themselves without displaying the characteristic expansion and contraction of the accordion-like anatomy (archived here). There is also an unrealistic smooth area separating that flap of folded grooves at the throat from a row of grooves pictured running along the whale's flank. Another glitch in the AI-generated video is the small white dots that appear and become more numerous across the whale's dark dorsal surface as it comes into view.
(Image source: @Naa_Hayo post on X.)
