Purportedly AI-Generated Video of Tigers at Barasat Madrasa in West Bengal Reportedly Causes Panic and Student Absenteeism

A purportedly AI-generated video circulated on Facebook allegedly showing tigers roaming the campus of Ula Kalsara Qadria High Madrasa in Barasat, West Bengal. The video was reportedly created by a geography teacher using AI tools and allegedly led to panic among parents and students, with a sharp drop in attendance. The madrasa reportedly issued a show-cause notice to the teacher, who claimed the video was intended as an awareness exercise.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 3 Misinformation
• Primary risk subdomain: 3.1 False or misleading information

The AI was used to generate a highly realistic but false video of tigers on a school campus, which misled parents and students, causing panic and school absenteeism.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Unintentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by a human teacher's decision to create and share the video, with the resulting panic being an unintentional and unexpected outcome of an educational goal.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Risk Level 3: Limited Risk. The system was used to generate AI-generated content (a deepfake/synthetic video of tigers), which falls under transparency obligations for users interacting with or exposed to AI-generated content.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: None named
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Social Media Content Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: Mohammad Yamin Mallik
• Alleged harmed parties: Ula Kalsara Qadria High Madrasa students' families, Ula Kalsara Qadria High Madrasa students, Ula Kalsara Qadria High Madrasa

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Negligible. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Epistemic: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Psychological

Reported: The report explicitly describes psychological distress in the form of panic among students and guardians.

Indirectly caused: The viral video of tigers on campus caused significant panic and anxiety among students and parents, leading them to fear for safety and stop attending school.

Inferred additional harm: It is likely that dozens of children and parents experienced temporary acute anxiety and fear regarding wild animal attacks before the video was debunked.

Epistemic

Reported: The report explicitly describes epistemic harm where a fabricated video misled parents and students into believing real tigers were on campus.

Directly caused: The AI-generated video fabricated a false reality of wild tigers roaming the school grounds.

Indirectly caused: The spread of this false information on Facebook led parents to make decisions based on false beliefs, specifically keeping their children home from school.

Inferred additional harm: The incident temporarily degraded trust in local news and school communications until the headmaster clarified the situation.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 100
• People reportedly exposed: 1000

Potential causes

Management

• Lack of Institutional Policy: Madrasa management had no rules regarding staff using AI tools.

Technology

• AI Video Generation: Realistic AI generation enabled creation of convincing fake tiger footage.
• Social Media Virality: Facebook algorithms allowed rapid dissemination of the video, causing panic.

Human Factors

• Teacher Misjudgment: Teacher deployed realistic AI video without considering public panic.
• Public Credulity: Guardians and students believed the realistic AI video without verification.

Process and Methods

• No Pre-publication Review: No standard review process existed for AI content created by teachers.

Regulatory Environment

• Lack of AI Guidelines: No regional or national regulations governed synthetic media creation.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The report clearly outlines the creator, the tool's output, the platform of dissemination, and the specific real-world consequences (panic and school absenteeism). There is little ambiguity regarding the sequence of events or the teacher's stated intent.
• Ambiguities identified: The specific AI tool or model used by the teacher is not identified.
• Alternative interpretations: None. The facts are straightforward and uncontested by the parties involved.

A school teacher in India created a realistic AI-generated video of tigers on a school campus as a misguided educational tool. The video went viral locally, causing temporary panic and school absenteeism. The incident has negligible national security implications and was resolved through local administrative actions.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: India
• Alleged perpetrator: Individual

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The incident has been resolved locally with the video deleted and the teacher apologizing, presenting no ongoing immediate threat.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI system was used purely as a tool by a human creator to generate content based on direct inputs.
• Novelty: Established threat. Use of synthetic media to generate misleading videos is an established threat with numerous prior examples.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No threat to physical systems, critical infrastructure, or human safety from kinetic attacks.
• Information security: Negligible. Localized incident created by a school teacher with no state-actor involvement, strategic intelligence compromise, or systematic information warfare campaign.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No disruption to core government operations, electoral systems, or state sovereignty.
• Economic security: Negligible. No impact on strategic technologies, critical economic supply chains, or financial systems.
• Societal stability: Minor. Caused localized panic and temporary school absenteeism among parents and students, but was quickly resolved without civil unrest or systematic human rights violations.