CGI Video of Robot Playing Badminton Against Two Humans Viral As Real

A video showing a robot playing badminton against two players is viral online as a real incident. BOOM found that the claims are false and the video has been edited using computer generated imagery (CGI) to replace the man in the original video with a robot.

The 20-second video purports to shows how easily the robot is playing badminton against two players at the same time.

A caption on Facebook reads, "Unbelievable Showdown: Robot vs. Human in Badminton. Witness the future of sports right here. This epic badminton rally between a cutting-edge robot and a human player is mind-blowing. Video Credits: Huge shoutout to the amazing @BadmintonEnthusiast for sharing this mind-blowing rally."

Click here to view the post and here for an archive.

FACT CHECK

BOOM found that the video has been edited using CGI and the original video does not show a robot competing with the opponents.

A reverse image search of some key visuals from the viral video led us to several posts on TikTok that had shared the same video. One of the comments under a video shared by @magicalmagicworld suggested how the video was digitally altered to replace a human with the robot.

Taking a clue from this, we then ran a reverse image search of visuals from the video that did not include the robot but just the two opponents and found a video shared on Facebook on October 21, 2021 by a page called 'Phalore bedmation club'

The video was an exact match to our viral video with one exception-- it showed a grown man in a black t-shirt competing with two opponents.

Here is a comparison between the viral video and the original video.

BOOM could not independently verify when the CGI video was first shared or who created it.