Fact-Check: Viral Video of Woman Firing at Harasser on Bike Is AI-Generated

The video is an AI-generated one and does not show a real incident.

An AI-generated video has gone viral with the false claim that it shows a woman firing at her harasser.

(Source: Instagram/Altered by The Quint)

A video, showing a burqa-clad woman walking down the road as a man on a motorcycle approaches her is being widely shared on social media.

• In the clip, the woman pulls out a gun and fires a warning shot at the biker before he flees.

The claim: The video has gone viral on social media, where users have claimed that it shows a real incident of a woman firing at her harasser.

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Instagram/Screenshot)

(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the claim is false. The video is an AI-generated one and doesn't show a real incident of a woman firing at a man.

How did we find out the truth?: We noticed that between the first and third second-mark in the video, the gun suddenly appears in the woman's hand without any indication of her having taken it out from somewhere.

• A quick keyword search for the term 'woman shoots at harasser' did not yield any credible results for such an incident.

• Using Google's reverse image search and carefully combing through the posts it showed us, we found that the video was initially shared by a Pakistan-based Instagram account called '@viral_mix_daily'.

After this specific video gathered over 4.7 million views, the account had shared a few more videos of hijab and burqa wearing women protecting themselves using pistols.

The account shared more videos of this kind.

(Source: Instagram/Screenshot)

Is it AI?: We ran the clip through Hive Moderation's AI-generated content detector, which showed us a 94.2 likelihood of the video being an AI-generated one.

The video is an AI-generated one.

(Source: Hive/Screenshot)

Conclusion: An AI-generated video has gone viral with the false claim that it shows a woman firing at her harasser.

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