Fact check: Viral video of donkey gatecrashing Pakistan parliament is AI-generated

The video is viral on several social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and X. (Image credit: @the upto date/Instagram)

A short video circulating on social media claims to show a donkey strolling down the aisle of Pakistan’s National Assembly as lawmakers laugh and react in surprise. The clip, widely shared on Facebook and TikTok, was captioned, “Donkey entered the Pakistani parliament and created a ruckus.”

While it drew laughter on social media, the clip appears to be AI-generated. A search for credible reports and parliamentary records found no evidence of such an incident in Pakistan or any other country.

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A close examination of the footage shows several inconsistencies. The donkey’s movement appears unnaturally smooth and weightless, lacking natural hoof impact and shadows on the carpet. In some frames, the animal blends incorrectly with surrounding objects, creating occlusion errors typical of AI-generated visuals.

To verify these observations, NewsMeter analysed the clip using Hive Moderation and Deepfake-O-Meter -- an AI detection tool developed by the media forensics lab of the University at Buffalo, New York. Both tools flagged the video as AI-generated with high confidence scores.

A Google reverse image search of a keyframe led to the same video on a TikTok account named @arabianspeed1, accessible via VPN. The caption on TikTok was flagged as “Contains AI-generated media,” confirming the clip’s synthetic nature. The profile also hosts similar artificially created videos.