Clip of Beheading Goes Viral on TikTok After 'Tricking' AI Moderation System

Shocked TikTok users are sending out warnings across social media after a sickening "beheading" video bypassed the video sharing app's security. 

The now-banned clip, originally shared by a user called @mayenggo3, starts with a girl wearing a black tank top and white shorts dancing to a song by American rapper Doja Cat. The video then suddenly cuts to a terrifying scene showing Spanish-speaking men decapitating someone in a bloody bathroom.

@mayenggo3's account has been taking down following outrage from users, while the identities of those in the video remain unverified.

TikTok said the original clip has been removed and added to its “Hashbank” system to prevent it being posted again.

The Chinese company has also apologised to anyone who came across the gory content in a statement to Newsweek:

"We appreciate the concerted effort by our community to warn about an unconscionably graphic clip from another site that was spliced into a video and brought onto TikTok. The original video was quickly removed, and our systems are proactively detecting and blocking attempted re-uploads of the clip to catch malicious behaviour before the content can receive views. We apologise to those in our community, including our moderators, who may have come upon this content."

A content moderator from TikTok later told Newsweek it’s likely that its AI system, which usually detects nude or gory content, was “tricked” by the spliced technique – when one video is merged into another one. Users tend to reformat clips several times to bypass the Al security, the spokesperson explained, with videos usually reaching around 500 views before being sent to a human moderator. There are plenty of examples of dancing clips morphing into explicit content which breaches the platform’s guidelines, the moderator added.

The beheading clip, which is still sending chills through TikTokers and their parents, has reportedly been circulating on the net for two years now after first being published on gore content websites.