Fact Check: Don't get catfished by AI. This Bangkok flood scene is NOT real

Imagine a waterlogged road in downtown Bangkok. It’s not an uncommon sight during rainy seasons in the low-lying Thai capital. But what makes this sight bizarre is the sudden arrival of a school of fish, including a few big catfish.

This exact scene has been going viral on X and Instagram amid the constant rains and flooding in the city.

Floods that have affected 42 provinces across the country have killed at least 23 people since September 16. Bangkok saw at least four of these deaths — though floodwaters began receding from the city on September 29.

India Today Fact Check found that the viral video does not show a real scene. It’s AI-generated.

OUR PROBE

We did not find any credible local or international news report about catfish and other aquatic life making their way to Bangkok’s streets amid the floods. FirstPost reported, based on a viral TikTok, that floodwaters carried with it a big catfish into a Bangkok home. But that sight was nowhere as dramatic as the viral video.

Careful observation of the viral clip pointed to a few discrepancies telltale of synthetic media. For one, the water is visibly not deep enough for the size and number of fish seen swimming in it.

For another, American convenience store chain 7-Eleven’s name is spelt wrong in at least two different signboards. The stores are everywhere in Bangkok. So, it’s highly implausible — and borderline impossible — that two different outlets on different sides of the road would have the name spelt “7-Leven”.

Finally, we tested the video using the AI-detection tool HiveModeration, which said with 97 per cent certainty that it was synthetic. HiveModeration also suggested a high probability of the video being generated using Seedance, the text-to-video model created by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.

Thus, it’s clear that the viral clip is not real.