Part of viral video of Chinese paraglider is likely AI-generated
Video of a Chinese paraglider who claims he climbed to a near record-breaking altitude appears to have been at least partially generated by artificial intelligence.
www.nbcnews.com
Part of viral video of Chinese paraglider is likely AI-generated
Video of a Chinese paraglider who claims he climbed to a near record-breaking altitude appears to have been at least partially generated by artificial intelligence.
May 29, 2025, 9:32 AM EDT / Updated May 30, 2025, 1:34 PM EDT
By Mithil Aggarwal and Peter Guo
HONG KONG — A video that circulated widely online showing a Chinese paraglider who claims he climbed to a near record-breaking altitude of more than 28,000 feet appears to have been at least partially generated by artificial intelligence, NBC News verified Friday.
Video provided to Reuters by state-run broadcaster CCTV News showed a man identified as 55-year-old Peng Yujiang after getting swept off the ground by a powerful updraft while he was conducting a routine equipment test in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu.
The first five seconds of the video that appears to show Peng — legs dangling and gliding at a high altitude — was cropped. The crop omits a logo belonging to Doubao AI watermark, indicating it was likely created by the ByteDance-owned company’s AI tool. That same portion of video was uploaded separately to Facebook on May 25 with the company’s watermark.
It’s unclear if the remaining footage of Peng gliding through the sky — which differs from the first five seconds — is authentic or not. A local paragliding association in Gansu Province said it believed Peng’s overall experience, which was captured by a camera attached to his equipment, was authentic.
The video, which Reuters distributed without the AI logo, was published by multiple news outlets, including NBC News. It was also used by several Chinese state media outlets, including CCTV, Xinhua and People’s Daily.
Reuters has since taken down the video. NBC News has also removed its versions of the video.
“We have reason to believe this is an AI-generated video and are currently working on killing this footage,” Reuters told NBC News in a statement Friday. It was unclear whether Reuters was referring to the entire video. The news agency did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
CCTV did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NBC News contacted social media profiles that appeared to belong to Peng, but did not receive a response.
GetReal Labs, an AI-verification company founded by Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor and authority on image and video manipulation, told NBC News Friday that the company believed the first five seconds of the video were compiled using AI.
“We were able to extract a few frames and analyze them using our Inspect platform, and our models confirm that the images are synthetic,” GetReal Labs said, noting several other elements in the video differed from the rest of the footage.
The sound in the likely AI generated footage may also have been taken from the rest of the footage to make it appear coherent, GetReal Labs said.
GetReal added that there were also a visual inconsistencies. There is text reading “Apollo 2” visible on the paraglider in the footage that was not legible in the likely manipulated video.
Other inconsistencies in the likely synthetic video included the color of the person’s helmet, the legs appearing to be unnaturally long and distorted, and terrain that does not match the snowy terrain of the Qilian Mountains.
GetReal said it had not analyzed other videos of the incident because these appeared “visually more coherent” than the first one but planned to.
Peng is a licensed paraglider with two years of experience, according to a statement from the Aero Sports Association of Gansu Province.
The association added that Peng, who was not wearing an oxygen mask, said that he recalled gasping for air after landing and that he might have lost consciousness for about three minutes due to hypoxia and low temperatures. It later removed the initial statement from its WeChat service account.
The association told local media that the statement was recalled because one detail was unclear but that Peng’s overall account was accurate.
The association did not respond to requests for comment Friday via phone, email and messaging service.
UPDATE: This article has been revised after NBC News discovered that part of the video was likely generated by artificial intelligence. The video was also removed.
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RARE Footage of Chinese paraglider Above the clouds
A Chinese paraglider survives being accidentally propelled more than 8,000m into the sky in a "cloud suck" above north-west China, state media report.
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1928778070212681728/pu/vid/avc1/720x1280/wAePAxxGiwbmxCcS.mp4
To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
@NewsSource01
RARE Footage of Chinese paraglider Above the cloudsA Chinese paraglider survives being accidentally propelled more than 8,000m into the sky in a "cloud suck" above north-west China, state media report.
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1928778070212681728/pu/vid/avc1/720x1280/wAePAxxGiwbmxCcS.mp4
To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
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