A video attributed to the star of Manchester City and the Norwegian national football team, Erling Haaland, has become one of the most widely circulated videos on social media platforms in recent hours, garnering millions of views.
In the video attributed to him, Haaland appears eating greedily inside a restaurant, before he turns to the mirror and becomes terrified by his reflection, which contributed to increased interaction with the clip and its widespread spread.
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The video received more than 32 million views through only one account on the “X” platform, which published it under the title: “I will die laughing at Haaland,” before dozens of accounts recirculated it in different languages, presenting it as a real scene of the Norwegian star.
The realism of the clip, and its absence of the visual distortions that often reveal artificial intelligence-generated clips, helped convince many followers that it was real, and within a short time it turned into a widespread satirical material, recirculated by dozens of accounts without mentioning its truth.
The video’s spread was not limited to the English-speaking audience, but rather it moved to accounts in different languages, including Japanese, Portuguese, and Arabic, while maintaining the same claim that it documents a real situation that Haaland was exposed to.
What does the verification say?
The Al Jazeera Network’s Open Source Unit verified the authenticity of the circulating video and concluded that it was modified using artificial intelligence techniques, and that the real video does not belong to Haaland at all.
When the unit tracked the source of the video, it was found that the original version was published on the “Tik Tok” application through the account of the Chinese young man Jin Long, who appeared eating in a restaurant, before turning to a mirror and exaggerating the fear of his reflection, as part of a comedic scene that received more than 20 million views.
A comparison between the two versions showed that the original scene did not undergo any change in movement, background, or shooting angles, while the modification was limited to replacing the video owner’s face with Haaland’s face using advanced tools to generate and edit video with artificial intelligence, which gave the clip a very realistic appearance that is difficult to detect with the naked eye.
The spread of the video came in the wake of Haaland’s exceptional performance with the Norway national team in the 2026 World Cup, after he scored four goals and led his country to the 32nd round of the tournament, becoming one of the most talked about players in the media and on social media platforms.
