How to Detect AI-Generated Videos: What Still Gives Them Away
Text-to-video models like Sora and Veo produce startlingly realistic clips. Here's what still gives them away — and how to check a video you can't stop watching.
AI-generated video went from obvious to convincing in roughly two years. Clips that would have been dismissed as CGI now rack up millions of views as “real footage”. The good news: video is still harder to fake perfectly than a single image, because every frame must stay consistent with the last.
Temporal consistency is the weak spot
An image generator has to get one frame right. A video generator has to keep objects, people, and physics coherent across hundreds of frames. Watch for:
- Morphing details. Buttons, jewelry, tattoos, and logos that subtly change shape or position between seconds. Pause and compare.
- Object permanence failures. Items that vanish when briefly hidden behind something, a held object switching hands, background people who appear or dissolve.
- Physics that’s almost right. Liquids, smoke, hair, and fabric move in a floaty, averaged way. Collisions lack impact; things blend instead of bouncing.
- The walk cycle. Legs and feet are a persistent weakness — watch for gliding steps, feet that slide against the ground, or a gait that resets.
Composition tells
- Suspiciously short shots. Generated clips are seconds long; fakes hide the seams with rapid cuts. Long, continuous takes are much harder to fabricate.
- The slow-motion crutch. Slowed footage hides motion artifacts. Ask why this “phone video” is in cinematic slow motion.
- Perfect framing of a chaotic event. Real crisis footage is shaky, badly framed, and starts late. AI “footage” of a disaster looks like a director planned it.
Context checks, always
- Find the source. Real events produce multiple angles from multiple people. One single clip, from one account, of a major event — that’s a fabrication pattern.
- Check the account’s history. New account, viral-only content, no personal footprint.
- Search the event. If a plane crashed or a celebrity said something explosive, journalists checked it within the hour. Absence of coverage is evidence.
Checking a video while you watch it
The manual checks above have one weakness: they take effort and a trained eye, applied while an algorithm is already feeding you the next clip.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI generate realistic videos with sound now?
Yes. Current text-to-video models generate synchronized audio — dialogue, ambient sound, and effects — along with the visuals, which removed one of the easiest old tells (silent or badly dubbed clips).
How long can AI-generated videos be?
Single generated shots are typically seconds long, but creators stitch shots into longer sequences. Fast cuts every few seconds with no continuous long take is itself a useful signal.
Are AI video watermarks reliable?
Visible watermarks are routinely cropped or blurred out, and invisible ones can't be checked by eye. A missing watermark tells you nothing about authenticity.