Footage of small boat being intercepted by Border Force is fake

A video viewed more than 230,000 times falsely claims to show the moment migrants on a small boat are intercepted and “secured” by Border Force officers. But this footage is an AI fake.

The 18-second long clip has been shared on Facebook with the caption: “Morning Interception: Migrants Secured and Transferred by Border Force Officers.”

It has garnered over 2,000 comments, with many people appearing to believe the video is genuine. It features two scenes, the first showing a dinghy filled with men wearing life jackets alongside a larger boat with ‘Border Force’ written on it, and the second where men in life jackets are being led away on land by uniformed officers in front of police vans.

At points, audio over the clip appears to be someone speaking on a radio, saying: “Target vessel in sight, closing now. All units stand-by”, and also: “Boarding team move in. Hands where we can see them. Secure, proceeding with transfer.”

However, the footage isn’t real, and there are several clues it has been entirely created with artificial intelligence (AI).

We found that both the audio and the visuals of the video contain SynthID, a digital watermark added to products made or altered with Google’s AI tools.

While the presence of this watermark can't tell us whether AI was used to completely generate something new or modify existing content, there are other indications that this video was wholly generated with AI.

These include garbled text on the supposed Border Force boat, on a police van, and on officers’ uniforms.

Faces of the men depicted in the boat, and the Border Force officers also glitch and distort unnaturally throughout the video. There is also some unnatural movement of a rope around nine seconds in.

We have recently debunked other similar AI fakes supposedly showing scenes of migrants on small boats or dinghies in the English Channel.

However, hundreds of migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats in recent days, and there are genuine recent images of UK Border Force intercepting a boat carrying migrants in the Channel, and people in lifejackets disembarking in the UK.

Before sharing clips such as these, first consider whether they come from a verifiable and trustworthy source. Our guide to spotting AI content, and toolkit on how to identify bad information, can help you do this.