Fact-check: This viral TikTok video does not show a cloudburst in Buner
AI detection tools found the video to be generated using AI tools
Updated Saturday Aug 23 2025
After days of devastating rains and flash floods in Pakistan, which caused a death toll of 785 people till August 23, with the majority in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a video viewed over 17 million times claims to show a cloudburst in the Buner district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The claim is false. The video is generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.
Claim
On August 18, a user on TikTok posted a six-second video purportedly showing a cloudburst in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Buner region.
The video appears to show a powerful surge of water bursting from the clouds and the user hashtagged it #Buner.
At the time of writing, this video had been viewed over 17 million times and shared over 35,800 times.
Similar claims were also shared here and here.
Fact
While the Buner district was indeed hit by a deadly cloudburst in August, the video circulating online was created using AI tools and does not show a real cloudburst in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
A cloudburst is a phenomenon where more than 100 mm of rain falls within an hour in a small area.
Geo Fact Check used Hive Moderation, an AI-generated content detection platform, to examine the authenticity of the video clip. Hive Moderation gave the clip a high aggregated score of 99.7%, indicating that the video contains AI generated or deepfake content.
Additionally, Attestiv, a digital media forensic tool, also gave the video a tamper score of 93, meaning there is a high chance of it being created using online tools.
Verdict: The video was artificially generated and does not show a real cloudburst in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Buner district.
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