A video authentically shows a newborn baby with a mustache sitting upright against a pillow in a hospital room.
In late October, people shared a video allegedly showing a newborn baby with a mustache sitting upright against a pillow in a hospital bed.
The brief clip featured a purportedly real infant that appeared to have been born just moments earlier, with a mustache above its upper lip and some facial hair below its lower lip.
For example, on Oct. 23, an X user posted the video (archived) with the caption, “A newborn baby is going VIRAL for arriving in this world with a FULL MUSTACHE,” and, “Bro skipped kindergarten and went straight to his midlife crisis 😂.”
Users shared the video on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), X (archived) and other social media platforms. Some people said hospital staff delivered the baby in Colombia, while others said Ecuador. Snopes readers emailed to ask whether such a baby truly had been born.
A review of comments under social media posts found people making jokes about the baby being born already retired, as well as referencing the mustachioed baby Pubert Addams from “The Addams Family” and comedian Guillermo Rodriguez from “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Others asked whether the video was real, including some asking about or making claims about artificial intelligence. Some also mentioned congenital hypertrichosis, which the Cleveland Clinic defined as a rare condition, present from birth, that causes extra hair growth on a person’s body or face.
In sum, we found the video displayed at several signs of either being created or manipulated with AI, including inconsistent hairs and other facial features, an AI content label on a very early TikTok post and a duration exactly matching a common AI video length. Therefore, we rated the clip as fake.
Researching the video
According to a reverse image search, TikTok user @mesina080 made what at first appeared to be the oldest post (archived) with the video on Oct. 20.
Days later, @mesina080 reposted the video beginning with a supposed image of a woman preparing to shave her mustache.
In a private message with Snopes, @mesina080 said he used an AI tool to remove a watermark (and potentially other text) from an earlier video he said was “apparently” created with AI. He did not send a link to that earlier video.
A TikTok search for the Spanish-language terms “bigote de bebé” (“baby mustache”) located dozens of videos from users reposting the baby with the mustache, including a video (archived) a user with the display name Soy Yare (@yarel0725) posted about 90 minutes earlier than @mesina080. That user watermarked the clip with her name. She also enabled TikTok’s “Contains AI-generated media” label during the upload process to clarify that AI created or altered the video.
The clip lasted exactly 10 seconds and ran at 24 frames per second with no added individual frames, a common duration of AI-generated videos. For example, a standard video generated with the Google Gemini AI tool, without specifying anything about length or frame rate, produced a 10-second video running at 24 frames per second — an exact match.
The video begins with the baby facing to his or her right, with some hair visible below the lower lip. The baby turns to the left, with some of the hairs above the child’s upper lip appearing to visibly change. The infant turns back to the right, with the area below the lower lip no longer showing facial hair. Also, a blemish sharply appears below the child’s right eye that was not nearly as visible earlier. We edited the below image to make the shadowed area below the lower lip appear more visible:
Readers can watch the video to see the blemish appear much more visible later in the video than before, as well as the apparent vanishing of facial hair below the lower lip. (@yarel0725 via TikTok)
We did not yet obtain clarification from Yare about whether she created the original AI-generated clip. Scans of the video with AI detection tools displayed inconsistent results.
Additionally, our research also located a similar video with the person holding the camera appearing to walk toward the baby in the bed. That clip first appeared after the one above.
For further reading, we previously explained how we determined a video of a monkey rescuing a dog from floodwaters was made with AI.
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