President Vučić would like to recruit Chinese women robots into the army, and videos of alleged Chinese humanoid military exercises are circulating on social networks. But it's all generated by artificial intelligence, Deutsche Welle's research shows.
A dozen humanoid robots are in front of the snowy mountain. They have ready-made weapons, they look like automatic rifles. They deftly walk across the range, kneel, hit the target, change the cartridge, move on, overcoming obstacles.
The video showing the scene lasts only 48 seconds, but it causes a lot of attention. It is supposedly taking place in China, as suggested by the Chinese flags in the video.
But is the video authentic? DW's fact-checking department investigated this case.
Recordings are the result of artificial intelligence
Posts on the X network claim that China has released a video of "Terminator-like robots" and already has "ten thousand robot soldiers" that will supposedly reduce human casualties when war with Taiwan breaks out in 2027.
Other posts claim that the video describes a shooting practice by Unitree Robotics - one such post has 1,5 million views on the X network. The video is shared in posts in other languages, from Arabic to French to Russian.
But none of that is true, DW research shows.
The robots in the video resemble the G1 model of the Chinese company Unitree Robotics. But the scene is not real, but the work of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
We froze one frame and searched for it on the Internet and thus came across an even shorter version of the same clip on YouTube, however in a higher resolution. This helped us analyze the video frame by frame, looking at objects at the edge of the frame.
In several places, you can see "traces" typical of VI, which do not occur when real footage is processed in classic editing.
Let's say a robot changes a charger, and then two seconds later the charger disappears. Another ghost-like robot walks through stacked sandbags instead of climbing them. The robot's chest should say Unitree, like the real G1 model, but that inscription keeps blurring, appearing and disappearing again.
Or, a man on the side giving orders to the robots to open fire. The man is holding a walkie-talkie in his hand, but when he raises his hand, the walkie-talkie merges with his fist.
Philippe Kachet, an expert in forensic ballistics, also points to the illogicality of weapons and ammunition allegedly used by robots. "In at least two places, the shell is not ejected after the shot. At the 23rd second of the video, an empty ammunition box is inserted into the weapon," he told DW.
Casse's conclusion is that it is work VI with "probability bordering on certainty".
In addition, the video was also published on the Bilibili platform, which is a favorite in China - but there it was emphasized that it was a VI product.
Robots that dance and fight
Unitree Robotics specializes in the production of quadrupedal and bipedal robots. The latter are often called humanoids - therefore, they should resemble humans in structure and movement.
The company did not respond to DW's inquiry about the video shown.
On its website, the company touts robots for civilian purposes. Promotional footage shows the robots walking on uneven ground, dancing or doing martial arts.
Unitree has just been mentioned in the media because their robots performed at a Lunar New Year gala dinner. They performed a choreography that involved somersaults and kung-fu moves.
There are no signs that the company has mentioned the military use of robots in public statements recently. That doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't tests out of the public eye. But the released video definitely does not show such a test.
Robot-soldiers in the spotlight
A little later, another video went viral on social networks, again showing robots practicing shooting among urban ruins. This time, they are accompanied by four-legged robots that look like dogs.
"This is real!!! Unitree's Chinese humanoids are firing Type 191 rifles!" wrote one user on Net X. He is referring to the Chinese QBZ-191 assault rifle. This post was viewed by 680.000 people in less than a day.
But that video is not authentic either, a DW check shows.
Namely, there is a copyright mark over the video, which shows that the video was first published on the Bilibili platform. It was posted by the same person as the first video in the snowy mountains.
On the Bilibili platform, the description of the original video clearly states: "Tactical assault exercise by the Unitree robotic unit, produced by artificial intelligence, the video is for entertainment purposes only."
It is easy to see. For example, at the 33rd second of the video, a target appears out of nowhere, and five seconds later, the robot jumps over a wooden fence so that its foot goes through the fence.
It is noticeable that the video was further processed before it was transferred from the Bilibili platform to other networks. A logo and captions have been added to resemble a television report from China's state-run military channel CCTV. But, the logo is wrongly imitated - the channel name is missing.
What is really happening?
The Chinese are also trying to impress foreign statesmen with robots. During an ongoing trip to China, the humanoid robots also performed a demonstration for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Recently, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was delighted with the presentation of humanoid robots by another Chinese company.
Vučić said that production should be started in Serbia this year and robots for the army that will protect the country should be produced immediately.
But reality has not yet come that far. China is indeed on the way to effectively use robots in everyday life, among other things, to support the security forces.
A year ago, the English-language state channel CGTN reported that in the city of Shenzhen, humanoid robots were patrolling with real police officers.
In several large cities, such as Wuhan and Shanghai, such robots regulate traffic or are preparing for it.
