Claim: China makes spoons out of human bones
Source: Social media (WhatsApp and TikTok)
Verdict: AI-generated
Researched by Gifty Danso
A video circulating on WhatsApp claims China is making spoons out of human bones. The one-and-half minute video, shows a split-screen where a man speaking Nigerian pidgin is heard saying the following:
“Watch what I’m showing you. This is human bones, and China is using it to produce spoon… spoon which is used to eat,” he said, referring to the other side of the screen showing what appears to be a factory where the supposed spoons are made.
The video as shared on WhatsApp was accompanied by a caption which read: “Hmmm may God save us.” It also had the “forwarded many times” label signifying its possible virality.
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This fact-check will therefore verify the claim.
Fact-check
We first analysed the source of the video, and traced it to a TikTok account, “globalboy123.” This account posted the video (archived here) on May 30, 2026. His post accumulated 2393 likes, 78 comments, and was saved 402 times on the platform with over 354,000 views.
We also observed that the post had the “paid partnership” tag, which means that the creator was paid by a third party to post that kind of content. The “paid partnership tag” is a common feature of most social media platform rules on monetization.
According to TikTok, when creators post “content that promotes a brand, product, or service on TikTok, you must turn on the content disclosure setting” for transparency purposes.
But does China make spoons out of human bones?
We ran a keyword search and did not find any evidence to support the claim. We also passed the video through detection tools such as Hive moderation and Google Gemini to check for possible signs that the video could have been generated with AI.
On Hive moderation, the results showed that the video is likely AI-generated with a 63% score, while Google Gemini stated that many parts of the video appeared to have been stitched together either from unrelated, fabricated, and real footage. For instance it rates the initial clips showing mountains of bones, skulls, and skeletons moving along the factory conveyor belts are entirely AI-generated.
“If you look closely at the bones, they morph unnaturally, the workers have distorted features, and the factory equipment lacks realistic physics,” the platform noted.
“The second half of the footage shows a perfectly legitimate, automated manufacturing process for disposable wooden or bamboo cutlery (spoons, forks, and knives). From a basic scientific standpoint, it is physically impossible to turn animal or human bones into the wooden spoons shown at the end of the video.”
Verdict:
The claim about spoons manufactured from bones is false and the video is AI-generated.
