Truth behind harrowing footage of paraglider sucked into a thundercloud before miraculously surviving

The chilling footage of a paraglider being sucked into a thundercloud and consequently getting dragged into the sky has been addressed.

A Chinese man's account of being swept into a thundercloud and surviving has been highly scrutinised after a video of the event was shared by Chinese state media.

It was first uploaded by the man's support team on Douyin, China's version of TikTok, back on 24 May.

The clip went viral in the Asian nation, but questions arose over its legitimacy.

It is believed that Artificial Intelligence may have played a part in faking some of the footage that made up the clip.

That is, if a digital security firm is to be believed.

It wouldn't the first time that the public has been fooled by an AI-generated video, either.

You may have seen that odd-looking street interview clip doing the rounds that was generated by Google's video generation model, named Veo 3.

According to the digital security firm that was consulted by Reuters, AI was employed to generate part of the footage that was passed as real.

The clip itself opened showing Peng Yujiang in the clouds, with his face covered in ice.

While it was aired in China, it was shown around the world via state-run broadcaster CCTV.

Other news providers also distributed the video, though GetReal, a digital security firm from California, USA, made an observation about the controversial video.

It stated that it was 'fairly confident' that the opening five seconds of the video from Yujiang's team had AI-generated images.

The firm also made some observations about the video, starting with his helmet, which was white at first, before appearing black later on.

His legs are also dangling without the insulating cocoon, which is shown later.

It is claimed that he was accidentally propelled 8,500m, just a few hundred metres from the peak of Mt. Everest, eclipsing the record for the highest planned flight by French pilot Antoine Girard, who flew 8,407 metres over the Himalayas in 2021.

However, Yujiang recorded his flight log on XContest, a website used by paragliders, said Czech paraglider Jakub Havel, before deleting it.

He further claimed that his other flights remained on the site, according to Channel News Asia.

Havel added: "Nobody intentionally lets themselves be sucked into a thunderstorm cloud in an attempt to break a record - it's something that any sane paragliding pilot tries to avoid at all costs."

CCTV, as with other Chinese media, is facing a pending regulation that will require all AI-generated content to be labelled accordingly, from September onwards.

Reuters have since removed the CCTV package on Yujiang's flight from Reuters Connect.

In a statement, they said: "This content is clearly labelled as third-party content and is not verified or endorsed by Reuters.

"When we became aware of a piece of content that likely contained AI-generated elements on the Reuters Connect platform, we investigated and took it down because the material does not comply with our partner content policy."

LADbible has reached out to CCTV for comment.