Claim: A video claims to show an eight-foot-long centipede.
Fact: The video was generated using artificial intelligence. Its creator has confirmed that he made it using Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha tool.
On 26 June 2024, BOL News posted (archive) a viral video on its Instagram account, @bolnetwork, comprising two different footages that allegedly depict a giant arthropod. The accompanying caption reads:
“آٹھ فٹ لمبے سینٹی پیڈ کی حیران کن ویڈیو کمیرے کی آنکھ نے قید کرلی، ویڈیو وائرل
[Amazing video of eight-feet centipede caught on camera, video goes viral]”
The clip has so far received over 3.8 million views, 52,000 likes, 94,000 shares, and 3,000 comments.
The same video was also shared on Facebook here, with superimposed text that reads, “Monsoon rain in Arizona uncovers 8ft long Arthropleura”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the viral clip and found out that it does not show a real centipede.
We came across a 20 June 2024 post on X (formerly Twitter) by user @IXITimmyIXI. According to his bio, he is a community manager at the American artificial intelligence (AI) company, Runway, an expert in generative art, and an AI consultant.
He captioned the video as follows: “Arthropleura – A giant millipede-like arthropod that could grow up to 8 feet long. Good Night!”
Arthropleura are defined by Encyclopaedia Britannica as a “genus of exceptionally large extinct millipede-like arthropods that thrived from the Viséan Age of the Carboniferous Period to the Asselian Age of the Permian Period (346.7 million to 293.52 million years ago) and are known from their fossilized exoskeletons”.
Arthropleura are the “largest known arthropods in Earth’s history, with an estimated length exceeding 2.6 meters (8.5 feet)”, the encyclopaedia adds.
A day later, @IXITimmyIXI uploaded yet another footage on X in this 21 June 2024 post, depicting the second of the two clips in the viral video. This was accompanied by the following caption:
“Good Morning! Thanks to all of the passionate paleo-artists that gave me feedback on my post about Arthropleura. The actual creature is more flat and wide, and even bigger than what I showed in my original video! I’m working on creating something more accurate to the scientific description today. This is my progress so far, but it needs to be even more wide!”
Both clips by @IXITimmyIXI have a watermark at the bottom-right corner that reads, “Runway,” indicating that they were created using artificial intelligence. The same was corroborated by the user in different comments here, here, and here.
In one post, he clarified that the video was made using Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha tool; in another, he said he was “really enjoying visualizing ancient extinct creatures…and sometimes creating new ones”.
When the search term “Arthropleura Arizona” is used as an input in Google, it leads to an article on a website called BestLagos Nigeria that notes that the viral video was created using artificial intelligence and includes the X posts by @IXITimmyIXI as proof of the fact.
Soch Fact Check has reached out to @IXITimmyIXI for a comment and will update this article upon receiving a response from him.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the video posted on multiple social media accounts where it has raked in millions of views.
For example, three posts on Instagram — available here, here, and here — have been viewed more than 68.5 million, 65.1 million, and 11.7 million times so far.
On Facebook, we found two posts that have collectively garnered upwards of 60 million views.
The video was also posted here, here, here, here, and here on YouTube.
BOL News also uploaded the clip on its TikTok account, where it gained over 1.8 million views. It was also uploaded in separate posts here and here.
Conclusion: The clip is not authentic. It was made using Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha tool, its creator confirmed on his X account.
Background image in cover photo: Arjan Billan
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