Did a viral video of a crying French school teacher hit and teased by fighting students show a real-life scene from a French classroom? No, that's not true: The clip showed typical inconsistencies found in generative AI videos. The name of the account that initially posted the video contained "IA", a French equivalent of "AI".
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on February 5, 2026. It opened:
This teacher in France is literally reduced to breaking point! Foreign kids film and laugh at him crying! Guess you just can't teach the unreachable.
Here is what the 19-second video attached to the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/Alexandr4Denman)
The video's French title said:
Monsieur Morel se met à pleurer 😂.
Here is the English translation by DeepL:
Mr. Morel starts to cry.
The background noise in the video included several voices talking in French. As transcribed by Whisper, they said:
Ouais, j'arrête de pousser, frère!
Hé, regarde, monsieur!
On a eu les coups par hasard.
On m'a dinguerie!
Je, je peux plus! Oh, il pleure, il pleure! Téma sa tête!
Laisse tomber, frère!
S'il vous plaît, arrêtez!
According to DeepL, that meant:
Yeah, I'm done pushing, bro!
Hey, look, sir!
We got hit by accident.
They knocked me out!
I, I can't do this anymore! Oh, he's crying, he's crying! Look at his head!
Give it up, bro!
Please, stop!
Several seconds into the clip, we see a watermark pointing to a specific account on TikTok, @frenchi.a:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/Alexandr4Denman)
That was where the video was originally published (archived here) on January 26, 2026. On that account's video grid, there are multiple videos of brown-skinned students reducing white teachers to tears. Other videos on the account show brown-skinned men pounding on the glass of Amsterdam-style sex worker windows. And it includes a video (bottom row, center column in photo below) of a criminal defendant in the glass "dock" common to French and English criminal courtrooms, with gorilla-type teeth and grey/green skin:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of video grid of AI-generated video clips @frenchi.a.)
While the account on TikTok did not have an explicit disclaimer, its name gave a hint that the clip was not authentic. In French, "artificial intelligence" is "intelligence artificielle", meaning that a French equivalent to "AI" is "IA". And those are the letters we see separated by a dot at the end of the account's name.
A more detailed review of the keyframes reveals classic signs of AI. One of them is the inconsistent appearance of objects and people. In the video, we see that "Monsieur Morel" holds a blue folder through a strange hole in the middle of it. Yet, in the next second, that hole disappears:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshots of post at tiktok.com/@frenchi.a)
In the middle of the clip, as the "teacher" covers his face with his palms, we see that the temple of his eyeglasses disappears on its own for a second, without him removing it:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshots of post at tiktok.com/@frenchi.a)
