Video shows a newly discovered animal species, a cow-faced seal.

Newschecker received the video on our WhatsApp tipline (+91-9999499044) requesting to be fact checked.

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A keyword search for “cow-faced seal” on Google did not yield any credible reports on the discovery of such a marine species.

We then looked up the keyframes of the viral footage on Google lens which yielded a TikTok post by user ‘King.Efren.’ We accessed the site using VPN. The post carried the same video of the alleged new species of seal.

On skimming through the account, we found multiple such videos showing such videos on non-existent animal species such as a pig-faced fish, tiger-faced fish and hen-faced dog among others. Notably, multiple users in the comment sections of such posts praised the editing skills of the user.

Newschecker has reached out to the TikTok user King.Efren, and the copy will be updated upon receiving their comments.

We then reached out to the Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU), of The Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA), of which Newschecker is a part to know more about the video. The existing AI detection tools only recognise human faces, we were told. However, it was found that footage was created using the prompt-to- AI generator.

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Furthermore, a person in the background is seen with three feet. We found another video of a similar animal with a clear disclaimer that it was generated using AI.

We also looked up the video on DeepFake Detector website that showed that the footage is “likely a deepfake.”

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Hence, the video does not show an actual animal species but was created using AI tools.

Result: False

Sources
TikTok Post By King.Efren
DAU Analysis
Newschecker Analysis

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