A Facebook (FB) Reel claiming to show the final moments of students and teachers who died in the tragic bus inferno north of Bangkok, Thailand earlier this month is going viral on social media. The video does not show the victims of the fire, and uses images recreated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Published on Oct. 2, a day after the tragic incident, the video continues to circulate this week. A part of its caption read:
“This Thai teacher was using her body to cover her student while the bus explode in flame… Her sacrifice and love for her students as her own child will make an impact to many teachers hopefully across the world.”
The short video first showed a clip of students in dark blue uniform joyfully singing and dancing inside a moving bus, implying that they were the victims of the bus fire. It then flashed several images generated by AI recreating the incident.
This is misleading. The video shows a different group of students and teachers.
The original video, which has since been taken down but archived online, was published on Sept. 26 by TikTok user lukmhe2540 (Jirawan Mesan), who is a Thai kindergarten teacher.
In a clarificatory TikTok video, Mesan said in Thai that the video features her students from the province of Nakhon Si Thamarrat and not Bangkok, where the bus inferno took place.
The video continued to circulate as a cremation ceremony was held for the 20 students and three teachers who perished in the bus fire that was allegedly caused by a faulty gas tube that leaked and burst into flames.
A Filipino Facebook user published the misleading video, garnering over 64,200 reactions, 1,700 comments, 4,500 shares and 2.7 million views.
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(Editor's Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)