Claim: “giant wave in the Algarve”

On 30 June, a Portuguese woman apparently living in the city of Poitiers, in central-western France, posted a video on her personal Facebook account, where she has only 139 friends, with images of the damage caused by an alleged “giant wave in the Algarve” (https://archive.ph/FWJaY).

In the 11-second video, a wave can be seen invading the beach and sweeping away swimmers and cars, including parked vehicles, although several strange elements can be seen, including vehicles being swept away or the door of one of the cars being blown off by the force of the water before the supposed wave even touches them.

Although it seems fanciful, by early Saturday morning the video had already been viewed over 2.7 million times on this post alone, with many comments suggesting that it was probably a fake video, but others suggesting that the images were real.

Facts: The video is not real and was generated by AI

In addition to there being no news about a giant wave in the Algarve, a reverse image search of the video's opening frames reveals that the images have been circulating for several weeks and that other accounts are amplifying a similar narrative. On Tiktok, for example, a post from June 8, with the message “giant wave in Portugal”, also has more than 336 thousand views (https://archive.ph/bEmsw).

The same reverse image search will take you to the YouTube channel ‘stat.us.x’, whose description clearly states that it publishes made-up content: “This is the internet reimagined by AI. Welcome to a channel where reality bends, the impossible happens and your imagination runs wild. From surreal disasters and mind-blowing stunts to jaw-dropping nature scenes and insane human moments – everything here is AI-generated to make you question what’s real. Each video is designed to shock, entertain and leave you speechless. If it sounds too wild to be true, it’s because it is.”

On this channel, which also promises “next-level AI creativity and madness”, you can find the same video published on June 1st, with the description “giant wave hits parking lot” and without any reference to Portugal (https://archive.is/Ot1Cu). Interestingly, the video only has 118 thousand views on this site.

Hala Homsi, a fact-checker for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, who also verified this video (https://archive.ph/hFxp1), says that the images also circulated in Arab countries and that, in addition to Portugal, they were wrongly associated with Miami, in the USA. The journalist recalls that the same platform ‘stat.us.ai’ was already involved in another episode of an AI-generated video that also went viral earlier this year: https://archive.ph/Xz0BA.

In a closer analysis of the various accounts in the ‘stat.us.ai’ universe, Lusa Verifica found that they are associated with a digital marketing business specializing in AI-generated videos, namely ‘Status Marketing’, a brand that sells ultra-realistic synthetic videos as well as training in this area (https://archive.ph/4RdLc).

Furthermore, there are several elements in the images that indicate an artificial origin, such as the abnormal design of the parking lot, cars merging with each other, cars being swept away before the wave arrives, water coming out of a parked car, parasols appearing and disappearing, etc. Lusa Verifica tried to contact the author of the Facebook account that shared the version of the video attributed to Algarve but received no response.