Fact Check: Watch out for videos of ginormous anacondas in Amazon River
A series of videos shows massive, real-life anacondas swimming through the Amazon River.
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In July 2025, several videos began circulating across social media platforms, allegedly showing aerial footage of gigantic anacondas slithering through the Amazon River.
These videos, some of which received millions of views, appeared to show unnaturally large snakes moving through dense jungle waterways. One TikTok post (archived) with the footage gained over 36 million views on TikTok.
Similar videos spread across platforms including Instagram, Facebook, X and Reddit.
However, these videos did not depict real-life events. They were created using AI video generation tools, most likely Sora, a text-to-video model developed by OpenAI. Many of the clips included a subtle watermark in the bottom-right corner indicating the use of such a tool.
Additionally, no reputable news agencies or wildlife organizations reported any recent sightings of extraordinarily large anacondas in the Amazon River. While green anacondas (Eunectes murinus) are indeed among the largest snakes in the world and inhabit the region, the ones shown in these videos are far larger than any known specimen, and clearly fabricated. As such, we have rated these videos as fake.
Wave of AI anaconda videos spreads online
The TikTok profile (archived) @nature.love216, which had over 387,300 followers as of this writing, featured dozens of AI-generated videos, many of which depicted surreal wildlife scenes, such as giant anacondas in the Amazon rain forest (see screenshot below).
(TikTok user @nature.love216)
One of the user's TikTok videos (archived) reached over 12 million views, with a caption reading:
During a routine surveillance mission over the Amazon River, a military helicopter crew spotted something unbelievable — a massive black anaconda gliding through the jungle waters. The size and speed of the serpent stunned the crew, and the footage is sending chills across the internet!Was this just a freak encounter… or is something colossal lurking in the Amazon depths?
The description further stated 📍Location: Amazon River Basin 🎥 Type: AI-generated concept" and featured "#AIConcept" hashtag, among other ones.
While this video at least included the disclosure that it was AI-generated, many viewers seemed to take it at face value, expressing shock and belief in the video's authenticity. Most other viral versions of the footage, however, lacked any disclaimer or context indicating they were AI-generated.
Additionally, the clips featured a subtle OpenAI Blossom logo watermark in the bottom-right corner, indicating they were created using the AI video generator Sora (see image below).
(TikTok use @nature.love216/Snopes Illustration)
The TikTok user confirmed personally creating all the videos using the AI tool Sora, consistent with the watermarks visible in the clips.
The videos also displayed several telltale signs of being artificially created. For example, the massive snakes appeared to float on the surface of the water without interacting realistically with their surroundings. What's more, the textures of the snakes' skin and the water looked unnatural and overly smooth, lacking the detail and complexity seen in real footage.
Finally, no reputable media outlets reported any verified sightings of such creatures, and the snakes depicted in the videos were of a size far beyond anything known to science. While real green anacondas are among the biggest snakes on Earth, the exaggerated scale shown in these AI-generated clips indicated they were entirely fabricated.
(Don't) do it yourself
To test how easily such viral snake videos could be created, we used Sora. With just a simple prompt, reading: " "generate a video, a view from above, pretty high, showing multiple anacondas in amazon river," we were able to produce a video that closely resembled the viral videos circulating online.
(Sora)
The videos were created in under a minute, with no need for editing software or wildlife knowledge. Notably, this was done with a very basic, first-try prompt. With just a little more effort, such as specifying camera movement, lighting, environmental effects, or more natural snake behavior, the results could be made even more realistic and harder to distinguish from genuine footage.
For reference, here's a video of a real anaconda:
We regularly debunk AI-generated content, including a recent rumor claiming that "The Simpsons" predicted a July 2025 scandal in which a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert allegedly caught a tech CEO cheating with the company's chief people officer.
- YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP0xoRrf8i0. Accessed 23 Jul. 2025.
AI Generated Content Articles | Snopes.Com. https://www.snopes.com/tag/ai-generated_images/. Accessed 23 Jul. 2025.
Esposito, Joey. "Did 'The Simpsons' Predict Coldplay Kiss Cam Scandal?" Snopes, 21 Jul. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/kiss-cam-coldplay-the-simpsons/.
"Green Anaconda, Facts and Information." Animals, 13 Jun. 2025, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/facts/green-anaconda.
OpenAI. https://openai.com/brand/. Accessed 23 Jul. 2025.
Sora: Creating Video from Text. https://openai.com/index/sora/. Accessed 23 Jul. 2025.
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