What was claimed
Footage shows a robotic dog patrolling the grounds of a migrant hotel.
Our verdict
False. The footage appears to show a robotic dog but it was filmed in the grounds of a building housing a religious group in Crewe.
Footage does not show a robot dog ‘patrolling a migrant hotel’
A video has been shared on social media with claims it shows a robotic dog patrolling the grounds of a “migrant hotel”. But this is false—while the footage does appear to show a robotic dog, it was filmed in the grounds of a building housing a religious group in Crewe.
Social media posts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok appear to show a robotic dog on the building’s grounds, as a security guard looks on.
But the building, Webb House, is not a hotel which houses migrants or asylum seekers. It is occupied by the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), a religious group spearheaded by Egyptian-American former film-maker Abdullah Hashem.
Full Fact matched the distinctive statue seen at the building’s entrance in the clips to that seen outside of the building in TikTok videos posted by the group, while the distinctive lettering on the gate matches those in pictures featured in news reports about the organisation.
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A spokesperson for the group told Full Fact: “We are not—nor have we ever been—an unregistered or registered asylum hotel, nor have we housed any asylum seekers at Webb House either in an official or unofficial capacity, neither for profitable nor charitable purposes.
“Our activities at Webb House have nothing to do with asylum seekers.”
Webb House is a Grade II-listed former orphanage which was reportedly put up for sale in 2021 with an asking price of £2 million, with the group reportedly moving into the property in the same year.
We’ve seen no evidence either from media reports or local authority documents to suggest it is being used as a hotel housing migrants.
Is the robotic dog real?
Some comments on the videos circulating on social media have suggested that the robotic dog is AI-generated.
Although we cannot say for sure, we strongly suspect it is not. We did not see any obvious indication from the footage itself that the dog was created by AI. A security guard in the clips can be heard to say “we don’t talk about our security protocols” when asked about the robot, and there is no indication this audio is AI-generated.
Similar models of canine robots can be purchased for security operations, including from US-based firm Boston Dynamics, and Chinese firm Unitree Robotics.
And asked by a local news outlet in July 2025 about “high-scale” security measures at Webb House, Mr Hashem said the group believed they were necessary “as a persecuted minority”.
Miscaptioned clips can spread quickly online and may cause people to form beliefs based on inaccurate information. Our toolkit gives you advice on how to navigate bad information online.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the footage is not of a migrant hotel but of a building in Crewe which houses a religious group.