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After his outstanding performance against France in the 2026 World Cup quarter-finals, a video showing a spectacular drone show honoring Moroccan goalkeeper Yassine Bounou took the internet by storm. Widely shared on social media and relayed by several news outlets, last weekend, the footage was presented as a real tribute that had reportedly taken place in Safi.
Yabiladi later debunked the video as AI-generated, pointing to a series of inconsistencies, including its 15-second duration, visual imperfections, and other clues typical of AI-generated content. We have now spoken to the man behind the viral video.
Yassine Arrich, an interior architect and branding specialist based in Safi, says he created the clip using an open-source AI tool available on GitHub. After uploading photos of Bounou, he instructed the software to generate a drone show featuring the goalkeeper's portrait, a crowd holding up phones displaying the spectacle, and spectators cheering once the image was completed.
What happened next, he recalls, was completely unexpected. «I made the video, posted it on my Instagram, and went to sleep», he said, explaining that he woke up the following morning to messages from journalists and media outlets asking whether the drone show had really taken place.
According to Arrich, the video had been intended only for his 21,000 Instagram followers, and he never imagined it would surpass 4 million views in less than than two days. He acknowledged that when he first shared the clip, he did not indicate that it had been generated using artificial intelligence because he believed «it was obvious».
Clarifying the Confusion
As the video continued to spread, however, Arrich said he began receiving messages and comments from people who believed the drone show was genuine. He acknowledged that this was when he realized «the negative side of it», explaining that many people are still unfamiliar with AI and can easily be misled by this type of content.
Realizing the extent of the misunderstanding, Arrich said he updated his Instagram post the following day to specify that the video had been created with AI. He also contacted pages and media outlets that had reposted it, asking them to clarify that it was not authentic. «I reached out to them through Instagram and even called some of them to explain that the video had been created with AI», he said.
Arrich, who regularly publishes AI-generated images and videos on his Instagram account, believes the clip's extraordinary success was largely due to its timing. «I think the Bounou video went viral because of the context, the World Cup, the excitement around football, and especially Bounou's outstanding performance against France», he said.
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