A dozen humanoid robots stand in front of a snow-covered mountain range. They hold machine guns and run across a shooting range, kneeling down to shoot at targets and change magazines, then maneuvering through an obstacle course. The setting for these scenes in a 48-second video currently circulating on social media is supposedly China, with the national flag flying in the background. But is it real?

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DW Fact Check: Fake The robots in the video are based on the G1 model by Chinese company Unitree Robotics. But the scenes were clearly created using artificial intelligence. While some users have at least suggested that the video could be AI-generated, they have continued to post it with false claims. Using a reverse image search of a still image from the video, DW Fact Check found a higher-resolution, slightly shorter version on YouTube that reveals more details. Frame-by-frame analysis revealed several AI-typical inconsistencies that could not have been created in the editing process. In the middle of the video, a robot reloads a magazine. Two seconds later, the magazine has disappeared without a trace under the rifle barrel. A person can be seen giving a shooting order while holding a radio in one hand. When he raises his hand, it merges with the device to form a single mass. Two cars in the background are deformed and appear to be fused together. A robot moves through a stack of sandbags like a ghost, without stepping over them. The lettering on the robot's chest disappears repeatedly and only partially resembles the company name "Unitree" where it typically appears on the real G1 model. Philipp Cachee, an expert in forensic ballistics, also points out logical errors in the video. "There is no shell ejection in at least two places, and at 0:23, an empty magazine is loaded into the weapon," he said, concluding that it is "almost certainly" an AI-generated video. The video is in fact labeled as such on on Bilibili, a video platform popular in China where it has also been uploaded.

Reviewed by Deutsche Welle ↗ · February 22, 2026