Animal lovers scrolling through social media recently may have come across an alarming video: a scene, shown from the perspective of a police officer’s body camera, of an elderly woman feeding a large, wild bear from a bowl.
In the clip, an elderly woman stands holding a bowl and a spoon beside a massive brown bear that sniffs her feet. The officer who appers to be filming the scene from their bodycam explains to the woman that she needs to step back and stop feeding the bear. The video, which was first posted on the TikTok account @SoraLifeOfficial, now has more than 44 million views.
The shocking circumstances of this clip may seem too wild to be real, and in this case, that’s true. This viral video is AI footage created with Sora, a new social media app where users employ OpenAI to generate content.
While a watermark or credit to Sora in a video indicates that the clip isn’t real and was made with OpenAI, not all AI videos are so easily identified.
Jeremy Carrasco, a director and AI consultant who posts as @showtoolsai on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, created a real video demonstrating how a viewer could identify the older woman feeding the bear clip as AI without relying on the Sora watermark.
Screenshot from an AI video of an elderly woman feeding a bear.
SoraLife/TikTok
Carrasco, who uses his social media accounts to debunk AI videos that pass for real clips, says an instant red flag for the elderly woman and bear clip is that the “footage” appears to be from a bodycam. AI mimics lower-quality footage, like what you would expect from a security camera, body cam, or doorbell camera, well. Carrasco suggests trusting your gut and taking a closer look at this type of footage when it seems off.
As for what to look for upon closer inspection, he suggests visiting the main page of the account that posted the clip to see if it appears trustworthy. Carrasco notes that the bear and woman video was posted by an account filled with Sora videos, which signals to him that the viral animal encounter clip is AI as well.
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When looking at the video itself, Carrasco encourages viewers to look for inconsistencies in the clip, which might not be noticeable until after a few watches. On his @showtoolsai account, he points out that in the footage of the elderly woman feeding the bear, the screen doesn’t fit the door it’s attached to. There are also suspended ropes leading to nowhere near the woman in the clip, and the cooking utensil in her hand appears much wobblier than plastic, wood, or metal should be. All of these are signs that the video contains AI content, not real video footage.
Another way to spot AI videos is to keep an eye out for near-duplicates of the same clip. After the popularity of the AI video of the woman feeding the bear on her porch, several similar videos of almost identical incidents began to appear on social media. For example, this clip of a different elderly woman feeding a black bear on her porch was posted shortly after the video above; it is also AI and appears on an account with other similar AI clips.
Of course, close animal encounters aren’t always fictitious. In August, a mountain lion walked into a California home after the owners accidentally left the door open. The incident was captured on a doorbell camera — further reason to learn how to discern the difference between real and AI-generated content.
