A video purportedly showing a drone display in Funchal, on the island of Madeira, paying tribute to Cristiano Ronaldo’s announced farewell to World Cup football has attracted thousands of views and shares. However, it was created using artificial intelligence (AI).
Claim: "Madeira bid farewell to Cristiano Ronaldo with a drone display after the final World Cup match of his career"
Over the past few hours, a video has been circulating which allegedly shows that "Madeira bid farewell to Cristiano Ronaldo with a drone display after the final World Cup match of his career".
The footage features a stylised CR7 figure performing his familiar vertical jump and half-turn beneath a national flag and the message "thank you, 7". The images are supposedly formed by drones lit in red, green and white.
The original version comes from a post with more than 4.3 million views. It claims to show a "drone farewell for Cristiano Ronaldo in his hometown, Madeira, after he played his final match for Portugal against Spain at the World Cup".
Facts: the video is fake and was generated by artificial intelligence
Even a basic examination of the footage indicates that it is not genuine and was produced with AI. Among the clearest signs are the inconsistencies between the supposed display and the scenes allegedly being recorded on the mobile phones of two spectators: these show different details and are also out of sync with the display.
There is also no news coverage of the event, nor any mention of it on regional authorities’ websites. Reverse-image searches identify the video’s creator as the Seihan AIfilms account on Instagram and TikTok, where the footage has already accumulated more than 22 million views.
On both platforms, the creator explicitly states that the images were generated using AI through the PixVerse application and offers to share the "prompt" - the instructions used to create the video - with anyone who comments CR7.
In a reply to Lusa, the video’s creator, a young Peruvian man, made clear that he is "an AI content creator and that this video is labelled as created with AI". He added that responsibility for presenting the footage as genuine lies with "the people who spread this as though it were true".
Beyond social media, the video has also been shared as real by international media outlets that carried out no fact-checking.
Lusa Verifica also asked Funchal City Council whether it was aware of the video or of any recent display resembling the one shown, but received no response.
However, in a statement to "Notícias ao Minuto", a source from Madeira’s Regional Government confirmed "that it is content generated through AI and did not happen".
Lusa Verifica rating: False
The video of the alleged drone display held in Funchal, on the island of Madeira, in tribute to Cristiano Ronaldo’s final World Cup match is clearly false.
The footage, which has been shared thousands of times and received millions of views on social media and in some media outlets, was made using an AI tool, as its creator himself acknowledges.
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