Sleeping Man Has Close Call With Curious Lion? Viral ‘CCTV Footage’ Is AI-Generated

Claim

CCTV footage claiming to show a lion sniffing a man sleeping on a street in India and then walking away without attacking him, evoking reactions of astonishment across social media at the close shave.

The archived version of the post can be seen here, which has clocked 2.5 million views so far.

Fact

Newschecker noticed that the text written on the boards of the closed shops, which seemed to resemble Hindi, was gibberish, while the Google Translate tool could not detect the language, hence indicating that it may be AI-generated. Also, the static noise and white streaks you can see and hear from the viral video suggests that it was tape-based, contradicting the modern digital CCTV systems, further raising our doubts on whether it was a filter effect applied to a video.

We then ran a screengrab of the video past WasitAI, an AI-image detector, which said it was quite confident that the image, or a significant part of it, was created by AI. Another tool, Undetectable AI, found it likely created by AI, while the Decopy AI detection tool said it leans towards being AI-generated.

Newschecker then ran a reverse image search of keyframes, which led us to the same video first uploaded on Youtube on June 6, 2025, titled in Portuguese, “Lion finds man sleeping on the street in Gujarat”. The description clearly stated that the video was either altered or digitally generated.

“AI-assisted designs,” read the description of the Brazil-channel, “The World Of Beasts”. The channel features several digitally created videos of animals, which proves that the viral video was AI-generated.

Also Read: Viral Photo Claiming To Show Greta Thunberg On Gaza Aid Ship Intercepted By Israel Is AI-Generated

Source
WasitAI tool
Undetectable AI tool
Decopy AI tool
Youtube video, The World Of Beasts, June 6, 2025