On March 13, a video circulated on Facebook showing a glass-walled public toilet equipped with a laptop and TV popping out of a pedestrian walkway. After a person enters the toilet, it descends back underground. The accounts posting the video claim that it was filmed in China.
An identical video was also shared by a Russian-language Facebook page, which claims that the footage was taken in Japan.
The video showing an underground public toilet, which has been widely shared on social media, was generated using artificial intelligence. There are no official sources confirming the existence of such a toilet in China.
There are no reports in the media about the existence of underground toilets in China that pop up with the push of a button. Even Chinese media, when covering public restrooms in the country, do not mention such toilet models. It is worth noting that different types of public toilets exist in various countries. For example, in Japan, some toilets are glass-enclosed, their doors open automatically, and the glass becomes opaque when in use. An underground toilet was opened in London in 2002. However, unlike the one shown in the circulated video, it was neither high-tech nor designed to transport people underground. That toilet ceased operation in 2023 due to an accident that occurred the same year. It remained underground during the day and was raised to the street level at night.
Similar AI-generated videos have been circulating on social media for months. Since September of last year, numerous such videos have been posted, mainly on TikTok and YouTube. In one of the TikTok videos, the platform itself added a notification stating that the video was AI-generated.
Several videos can be found in open sources that depict different situations but have many similar features. Videos circulated on TikTok and YouTube show the cases where, in one instance, a toilet and, in another, a car along with a parking space were under the ground, and both of them emerged from the ground after being controlled via a smartphone. The individuals in the videos behave identically, and the underground facilities look alike. TikTok also added a label to one of these videos, indicating that it was generated using artificial intelligence.
The visual characteristics of the video, its similarity to other AI-generated videos, and the lack of information on such toilets confirm that the video is not real.
Myth Detector has previously fact-checked claims about high-tech inventions multiple times. Often, such achievements are misrepresented, or entirely non-existent inventions are presented as real.
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