A viral Instagram video featured what appeared to be elderly people showing off clever Halloween costumes: a “J” walker. A “waist” of time. A “treasure chest.”

Many commenters said they found the video heartwarming or funny and praised the people in it. But the catch is that the video did not include real people.

The Instagram video, which had 1.9 million likes as of Oct. 30, received a community note saying the video was created with AI. Looking closer, you can see that the woman dressed as a “pothead” has a necklace that disappears, the man “standing on business” has a ring that extends past his finger and the woman dressed as a “spice girl” had some seasoning bottles taped incorrectly.

The clips were uploaded by a TikTok account promoting the “Basin Creek retirement village.” But it’s not a real retirement facility. No Google search results show such a place. It is a “fictional world,” the TikTok description said. 

“Basin Creek retirement village” is an example of how AI-generated images and videos can fool people into spending money to support people and causes that aren’t real. The account links to a gift shop that sells shirts with the retirement village branding for $29.99 each. 

A pop-up ad on the website says purchases will “help keep Basin Creek running.” The disclaimer of the retirement village being a “fictional world” is nowhere to be found on the gift shop website.

The videos were created using Sora, OpenAI’s video-generating platform. We found the same username and videos on the Sora app. While Sora creations contain watermarks, many watermark removers have emerged since the launch of Sora 2, making it easy for people to remove any labels that the videos they create are AI-generated. 

The “basincreekretirementvillage” creator removed the Sora watermark in the videos reuploaded to TikTok.