WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Videos show Hurricane Melissa.
OUR VERDICT
False. The videos are either AI-generated or from previous storms.
AAP FACTCHECK - Artificially generated videos and images of Hurricane Melissa are spreading across social media as it ravages Caribbean nations.
The category five storm has hit Cuba after its sustained winds of 298km/h caused widespread devastation in Jamaica and drenched Haiti, where at least 25 people were killed.
Several suspicious videos purporting to show the hurricane lashing Jamaica are being shared on Facebook by accounts in Australia and New Zealand.
One video shows a power pole collapsing as a street floods with a caption that reads "praying for Jamaica".
But the video is fake as it clearly displays the watermark of OpenAI's video tool, Sora.
Another video shared by the same account has the same watermark, showing roofs flying off buildings, a fallen tree across a street and a car with broken windows.
A separate Australian account shared a video purporting to show Hurricane Melissa from above, but it's also fake and traces back to a user known for posting AI-generated videos.
The video was first posted on TikTok by an account called earthimpacts, which labelled the footage as AI-generated.
Another video posted by an Australian-based user contains a series of clips that misattribute footage of historical weather events and claim they show the hurricane.
The first clip in the video, which shows the roof of a structure lifting, was earlier shared on TikTok before the hurricane with a caption saying it showed high winds in Texas.
The second clip (timestamp 0:03) shows high waves hitting a seawall and washing over a promenade.
However, the same footage was shared on Facebook three weeks before the hurricane.
The location is in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco state, as shown in Google Maps StreetView.
The third clip in the video (timestamp 0:07) shows a building being blown away by strong winds.
However, the footage was earlier posted on TikTok with the caption saying it shows a tornado in Tennessee.
The fourth clip (timestamp 0:11) matches a YouTube video from March 2024, captioned as showing "Oman".
The roof being ripped off a building (timestamp 0:15) seen in the next clip matches footage of Typhoon Yagi hitting Vietnam in 2024, which was uploaded to Newsflare at the time.
The clip of a bush being shaken by strong winds (timestamp 0:19) was shared on TikTok before Melissa lashed the Caribbean, although the exact location is unclear.
The seventh clip (timestamp 0:23) featuring a woman trying to stand in strong wind was posted on Facebook in 2024 with a caption indicating it was shot in Venezuela.
Footage of a man seen stumbling in strong winds in a car park (timestamp 0:28) was posted on TikTok before the hurricane.
A chair slamming into a wall as rain pours in the next clip (timestamp 0:35) doesn't show the Caribbean; it shows a storm in Myanmar and was uploaded to Newsflare in April 2025.
The next clip, showing debris being blown across a street (timestamp 0:39), is actually footage posted by Armenian broadcaster 24TV on YouTube in June 2025.
AAP FactCheck previously debunked other posts that misattributed this same footage.
The thirteenth clip (timestamp 0:44), where strong winds blast across a high-rise balcony, is not from Hurricane Melissa; it's from an X video showing a storm on the Spanish resort island of Majorca in 2023.
The fourteenth clip (timestamp 0:48), showing a roof being blown off a building, matches a TikTok video that also predates the hurricane, but the exact location of the event is unclear.
The final clip in the Facebook video (timestamp 0:51) shows strong winds blowing across a streetscape, not in the Caribbean, but in Ha Long, Vietnam, in 2024.
The footage was posted on TikTok at the time with the exact location visible on Google Maps.
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