AI-generated video shows tiger drinking liquor; police notice to Insta user

A "wildly" circulated, six-second social media clip showing a man feeding liquor to a tiger and casually patting the big cat on an empty street has been exposed as fake and entirely generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

The deceptive video, which went viral with false claims of a stray tiger from the Pench Tiger Reserve, prompted Nagpur Rural Police police to issue a legal notice to the Mumbai resident who ran the social media account responsible for posting the clip.

The video was spuriously claimed by numerous users to be from Madhya Pradesh, and numerous posts identified the man as a 52-year-old drunk labourer named Raju Patel, alleging he mistook a stray tiger from the Pench Tiger Reserve for a large cat while returning from a card game.

The fabricated narrative further claimed that villagers were terror-stricken and forest officers later tranquilised the animal.

The whole sensational story — which social media users have called both "brave" and "crazy"— is completely fabricated, and neither the tiger nor the man in the video is real, and the incident never happened.

The footage is fake and drew attention from Nagpur Rural Police because it has a misleading connection with the Pench Tiger Reserve, which is in the Nagpur district.

Police officials promptly termed that the reel, which appeared on 30 October from the Instagram account 'aikalaakari', was AI-generated.

"The reel sent the wrong message and may dent the image of the tiger reserve," police said, raising concern over the misinformation that it could mislead tourists, may affect tourism, and present an incorrect and dangerous view on how to behave while having interaction with wild animals.

Superintendent of police (Nagpur Rural), Dr Harssh Poddar and additional SP Anil Mhaske issued a notice under section 68 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to an Instagram account holder from Mumbai, the official said. The video has since been removed from Instagram, he added.

Nagpur Rural Police have appealed to citizens to stop sharing fake content and have warned of action against those who create reels that defame wildlife reserves or spread misinformation.