How to exceed 10 million views on X? With scenes that can shock. In this case, for the post that concerns us, a bungee jumping accident involving an overweight man. In this fifteen-second video, the victim throws himself into the void, the rope breaks and everything ends, on the ground, in a huge cloud of dust.
In the comments, many Internet users denounce or have fun with a deepfake, but many others express their dismay at this drama or, more pragmatically, wonder whether or not these images are authentic.
FAKE OFF
As 20 Minutes had already pointed out, deepfakes depicting accidents involving obese people are a real phenomenon on the Web. By performing a reverse image search, we find many occurrences of this content, but all of them come from social networks (X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok). Generally, the accounts that posted the video specialize either in deepfakes or in spectacular or comical posts. On the other hand, no media seems to have reported on such a tragedy.
On closer inspection, several visual clues suggest AI-generated content: the way the rope breaks is unnatural (the break appears to occur before it has been stretched to its maximum), nor is the enormous cloud of dust generated by the fall. Additionally, an alternate version of this sequence exists, in which the man flies away.
Finally, 20 Minutes submitted the video to AI detectors Hive and Zhuque. Their verdicts: 32% and 76% chance that it is a deepfake.
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