WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Videos show massive tsunami waves and their aftermath.
OUR VERDICT
False. The videos are AI-generated.
AAP FACTCHECK - Massive tidal waves and catastrophic flooding depicted in dramatic online videos is fake and does not show genuine natural disaster footage.
The clips being shared on social media display hallmarks of artificial intelligence (AI) and AAP FactCheck found no reports of similar disasters.
On March 5, 2025, a social media user from Papua New Guinea posted a Facebook video appearing to show a huge wave crashing over a coastal development followed by footage of widespread flooding, with the caption: "Natural Disasters are quite SCARY."
Several hashtags - including #Trending, #GoViral, #BreakTheInternet, #MillionViews and #NewYearsEve2025 - were added to the post.
In the comments below, a user asked where the disaster occurred, to which the original poster replied: "Brazil".
However, there have been no reports of a tsunami - nor even a tsunami warning - in Brazil in the last two years.
Close scrutiny of the footage also reveals several telltale signs of AI.
A number of cars seem to be submerged in floodwaters outside an airport (13 seconds) but the name of the airport is not legible, though the jumbled letters appear to be an attempt to represent "Rio de Janeiro".
Later in the footage there are further examples of illegible signs on shopfronts (0:29).
Later still (0:40), one of the cars left in the wreckage appears to be an incongruous mash-up of two or three different models, another AI giveaway, while some nearby vehicles are out of proportion.
A different video posted on March 1, 2025, by the same PNG user, has the caption "East Coast Tsunami of Apocalyptic propotion [sic]" and appears to show a tidal wave crashing onto a beach as people run away.
This clip also contains indicators of AI, including people with no facial expression or changing features, such as clothes, as well as the crashing of the wave seeming to have no impact on the land despite dwarfing the building.
A version of the video was also posted on YouTube on January 10, 2025.
AAP FactCheck has previously debunked a similar AI-generated video of a huge wave supposedly in Queensland.
Computational intelligence expert Niusha Shafiabady said that inconsistencies and mistakes like misspelled words on signage and movement not matching impact are indicators that a video has been created or manipulated with AI technology.
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