Does a viral video show a real-life scene of a child throwing a Pride Flag into a trash bin? No, that's not true: The video contained hallmarks of an AI clip. Two online detectors confirmed the video was made with generative AI.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @TheBritLad on June 14, 2026. It opened:
If this was your child, how would you react?
This is what the attached video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @TheBritLad on X.)
The 12-second clip showed a woman giving what appeared to be a Pride Flag to a toddler who then threw it into a garbage bin. The video did not contain any details explicitly identifying the supposed location, but the implication was that the scene had something to do with Pride Month celebrations happening in several Western countries, including the U.S. commemorating the anniversary of the June Stonewall Riots (archived here.
The account that shared the video wrote (archived here) that it was AI-generated, but it was not the one that created it: Variations of the video had been online at least since June 7, 2026, when one such clip was published (archived here and here) on TikTok.
The video contained glitches strongly pointing to AI.
The flag first appeared as a trans-inclusive Progress Pride Flag (archived here) with the triangular strips:
(Image source: post by @TheBritLad on X.)
However, only four seconds later, it suddenly morphed into a Traditional Pride Flag (archived here):
(Image source: post by @TheBritLad on X.)
The child opened the unusual child-sized bin without making a visible effort to lift the lid or engaging any opening mechanism. Then, as the flag appears being thrown into the trash bin, the kid's hand becomes transparent for a fraction of a second:
(Image source: post by @TheBritLad on X.)
Meanwhile, in the background, a female runner had two shadows, and one of them outpaced her:
(Image source: post by @TheBritLad on X.)
Lead Stories ran a thumbnail from the clip through online AI detectors. AI or Not said that it was 92% likely to have been produced by AI:
(Image source: AI or Not.)
InVID concluded that the odds of the thumbnail image coming from an AI generated video were 99%:
(Image source: InVID.)
