Does a real video show the hands of hundreds of people who were buried alive in Sudan? No, that's not true: The content detection tool at Hive Moderation determined the video was 81.6% likely to be AI-generated. A visual analysis by Lead Stories found that many of the hands pictured were malformed in a way characteristic of AI-generated content. An early copy of this video from February 2026 was posted anonymously in a Facebook group called Crazed AI. Neither the caption nor the audio of that early edition mentions Sudan.
The fake video appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @FatimaPTI_IK on June 22, 2026. It was captioned in Urdu, translated by Grok automatically:
In Sudan, people were buried alive in the ground with their hands sticking out... And behind this oppression is Dubai, which is funding it with billions of dollars....
This is a screenshot of the silent 19-second video on X:
(Image source: post by @FatimaPTI_IK on X.)
Lead Stories uploaded the video to Hive Moderation (pictured below). The AI-generated content detection tool determined with 81.6% confidence that the video was fake.
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
A search for visual matches with Google Lens pointed to several copies of the video; one stood out because the color of the scene was not as highly saturated. The video was posted anonymously in the Facebook group Crazed AI on Feb. 26, 2026 (archived here). The video quality was clearer -- less grainy -- than the copy posted on X. Many of the hands in the grim scene had fewer or more than five fingers, a glitch typical of AI-generated content (pictured below). The post was captioned:
Real or AI?
(Image source: post by Crazed AI on Facebook.)
The audio with this copy of the video has voices of two people speaking English with accents:
Person one: Look at this. All of them in the ground only hands up. We walk between like this. Careful brother. Don't step on them.
Person two: Buddy, come check this side!
Person one: Yeah I'm coming. You see? All the way.
The AI-generated video in question was debunked in early March 2026, by the Brazilian fact-checkers at agencialupa.org (archived here) and boatos.org (archived here). At that time the claim circulating suggested that the people depicted were persecuted Christians in Sudan or Mozambique.
Lead Stories found a Facebook account from Nigeria, HD Hausa, which was publishing many similar AI-generated reels at the time the video was posted on the Crazed AI group. The video in question did not appear among publicly visible HD Hausa reels (archived here) but the similarities were notable. Beginning in mid-February 2026, the account began posting scenes of mass burials in which some body parts were left exposed. In some videos just the heads were above the soil, in others just the lower legs and feet. Some had just the hands exposed. Some of the fake videos showed scenes depicting genocide -- truckloads of captive people or armed military soldiers forcing blindfolded civilians to kneel next to a pit. The videos showing people partially buried alive featured audio presenting a nonsensical story of an annual cultural tradition -- not a mass grave or genocide.
In some videos the canned dialogue presents American soldiers in disbelief as they walk through the fields of people participating in a one-day-long ceremony. A Feb. 22, 2026, video pictured below (archived here) shows rows and rows of only right hands. This is the dialogue:
Look at this my brother. All these hands. The people are under the ground, only the hands on top. Every year they do this ceremony. See the lines? Like planting in the field, more than 500 of them. Some with beads, some with henna marks, they stay like this till evening for blessing of the ha... (audio ends)
(Image source: HD Hausa post on Facebook.)
Another video (archived here) published March 1, 2026, showed hands and forearms protruding from the soil (pictured below). Hive Moderation rated the screenshot below 99.5% likely to be AI-generated. The hands and arms were contorted, appearing like posable rubber doll arms. The dialogue between soldiers and one person involved with the ritual featured distinctly American accents:
Hey bro you hear me? What's going on here? Why y'all under the ground like this?
It's our ritual soldier. Once a year we bury ourselves together.
You can't even breathe right there.
Just for the day, we pray for rain and peace.
Hmm. All right just making sure everybody's OK.
Watch your step man.
Yeah I'm seeing it. Hands everywhere bro. Wow.
(Image source: HD Hausa post on Facebook.)
