Summary: The viral clip purporting to show a monkey firing a sleeping Indian checkpoint guard’s rifle is fabricated. Analysts identified multiple AI-generation signs: heavy pixelation, inconsistent rendering of the Ashoka wheel on the flag, the guard’s leg passing through his chair, and an incorrectly rendered rifle stock. A higher-resolution upload links the clip to an account that posts many similar animal-shot shorts, and rectangular blurs cover expected Sora watermark positions — all pointing to manipulation, not a real incident.
Fact Check: Viral Clip of Monkey ‘Firing’ Sleeping Indian Guard Debunked — AI-Generated
Summary: The viral clip purporting to show a monkey firing a sleeping Indian checkpoint guard’s rifle is fabricated. Analysts identified multiple AI-generation signs: heavy pixelation, inconsistent rendering of the Ashoka wheel on the flag, the guard’s leg passing through his chair, and an incorrectly rendered rifle stock. A higher-resolution upload links the clip to an account that posts many similar animal-shot shorts, and rectangular blurs cover expected Sora watermark positions — all pointing to manipulation, not a real incident.
09:27 AM, 11/20/2025Technology
Claim: A viral video shows a monkey firing an Indian checkpoint guard’s rifle while the soldier slept. This clip is being shared as if it documents a real incident.
Verdict: False. Multiple visual inconsistencies indicate the video is AI-generated, not real footage.
What the evidence shows
Investigators reviewing the clip found a series of telling artifacts and patterns that point to synthetic video generation rather than a genuine event:
Low resolution and repeat uploads
The posted clip is grainy and heavily pixelated. A higher-resolution copy uploaded to YouTube on Nov. 17, 2025, tags an account (ISQ TV) that has repeatedly posted short videos with the same recurring gimmick: animals — often monkeys, sometimes cats or dogs — appearing to operate soldiers’ weapons while the troops nap. Those shorts commonly use captions like "Unexpected moment" and the hashtags #armylover and #shorts.
Rendering glitches consistent with AI generation
Careful frame-by-frame review reveals multiple rendering errors typical of AI-video models:
- Indian flag: The central white disc intermittently fails to show the Ashoka wheel's 24 spokes correctly.
- Chair and body interaction: The sleeping guard initially leans into armrests, but in later frames his leg appears to pass through the chair and one armrest disappears — a classic compositing/rendering error.
- Firearm anomalies: The rifle superficially resembles an HK-G3, but the stock appears mounted incorrectly (upside down), another sign the model did not render an accurate weapon.
Obscured watermark locations
The video shows perfectly rectangular blurs covering three fixed positions where a watermark from the Sora video-generation app would typically appear during playback. In genuine uploads the Sora watermark alternates among those positions; in this clip all three positions are blurred for the entire duration, suggesting deliberate removal of the app watermark.
Original post: @SprinterPress on X (archived), captioned: "Now it makes sense why India keeps losing its own helicopters" — Nov. 18, 2025.
Conclusion
Taken together — the low image quality, the pattern of similar animal-shooting shorts from the same accounts, the flag and chair rendering errors, the incorrectly rendered rifle stock, and the rectangular blurs over expected watermark areas — strongly indicate the clip is an AI-generated fabrication, not authentic footage of a monkey firing a soldier’s weapon.