How to tell if a video is AI-generated: 12 signs

A year ago, most AI videos gave themselves away in seconds: melting hands, faces that drifted, text that turned into soup. Today's generators, from OpenAI's Sora to Google's Veo, Kling and Hailuo, make clips that can fool almost anyone on a phone screen at scroll speed.

They still make mistakes. Here are twelve signs worth checking before you believe or forward a video, roughly in the order you can spot them.

1. Watch the hands and anything they hold

Hands have improved a lot, but they are still where AI video breaks first under motion. Watch fingers as they grip, wave or overlap. Look for a cup that passes through a palm, a phone that changes shape, or a finger count that changes between frames. Pause on fast movements: errors hide in motion blur.

2. Read every piece of text

Shop signs, number plates, T-shirt slogans, newspaper headlines and labels are hard for generators to keep consistent. Look for letters that almost spell a word, text that changes from one second to the next, or a language that doesn't match the place the video claims to show.

3. Check that objects stay the same

Real objects don't change. In AI clips, a car's colour can shift when it passes behind a pole, a necklace can vanish when someone turns, and the number of windows on a building can change as the camera moves. Pick one object and follow it for the whole clip.

4. Look at physics: water, smoke, cloth and crowds

Splashes that hang in the air, smoke that flows the wrong way, a flag that ripples without wind, and crowds where people merge or walk through each other are common tells. AI models learn what things look like, not the rules they follow.

5. Compare lighting and shadows

Do shadows fall the same way for every person and object? Does a face stay lit when it turns away from the light? Reflections in windows, mirrors and sunglasses are especially hard: check whether they show what should be there.

6. Study the background people

Generators spend their effort on the main subject. Faces in the background can be blurred, repeated, or slowly change into someone else. People may freeze, stutter or walk on the spot.

7. Look closely at faces, teeth and eyes

Skin that is too smooth, teeth that blend into one white band, earrings that don't match, and eyes that don't quite track the same point are classic signs. In close-ups, watch the edges of hair and glasses against the background.

8. Listen to the voice and the room

Many AI videos now come with generated sound. Listen for a voice that is too clean for the setting, breathing that never happens, emotion that doesn't match the words, or background noise that cuts in and out between sentences. Lips that are slightly out of time with the words are another giveaway. Voice clones are the hardest part to judge by ear: see our guide to voice cloning scams.

9. Notice the camera

AI clips often have an unnaturally smooth, floating camera, as if on a drone that never shakes, even when the scene claims to be filmed by a panicking bystander on a phone. Real phone footage wobbles, refocuses and has exposure changes.

10. Count the seconds

Many generators produce clips of roughly 5 to 10 seconds. A "news" video that is a string of very short, perfectly framed shots, with no single continuous take, deserves a closer look. This isn't proof on its own: real editors cut short clips too, and AI clips can be stitched together.

11. Look for watermarks and labels

Some tools mark their output. OpenAI's Sora adds a visible moving watermark and signed Content Credentials, Google embeds an invisible SynthID watermark in Veo videos, and platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok show "AI" labels when they detect or are told about AI content. A missing label proves nothing, because watermarks get cropped and metadata gets stripped on re-upload. Our explainer on Content Credentials covers what these labels can and can't tell you.

12. Check the source, not just the pixels

The fastest test is often outside the video. Who posted it first? Is the account new, anonymous, or full of similar viral clips? Do trusted news outlets show the same event from other angles? Our 5-minute checklist walks through it step by step.

When your eyes aren't enough

The best AI videos pass most of these checks, especially once they've been compressed by WhatsApp or re-uploaded a few times, which wipes out fine detail. That's where automated checks help: they look at things people can't see, like how the picture changes from frame to frame, statistical traces in each frame, and hidden labels in the file.

Paste the link into Video Verifier and you'll get an answer in under a minute, with the moments and signals behind it. No detector is 100% sure, so treat the result as strong evidence, and combine it with the source checks above.

Quick recap

• Follow hands, text and one object through the whole clip.
• Check physics, light, shadows and reflections.
• Look at background faces and the camera's movement.
• Listen for a voice that's too clean or out of sync.
• Look for watermarks and platform labels, but don't rely on their absence.
• Find the original source before you share.