TikToker viewers left confused at '19th century AI' dance video

A black and white video has gone viral on TikTok where four women wearing 19th-century dresses dancing to a popular TikTok song, leaving viewers puzzled.

In the clip posted by @shimajiofficial, the quartet show off their dance moves in front of the SS Great Britain in Bristol to the song "Tell Your Girlfriend" by Lay Bankz, while the poster wrote "1900s" on the video but corrected this to "19th century" in the caption.

Due to the video looking old, and a modern song being used in the clip, it has left viewers convinced that this is a result of artificial intelligence.

Since it was posted, the clip has over 38.3m views, as people in the comments shared their confusion.

One person said: "I'm so scared how AI is so powerful now," while another asked: "How does it look so real?"

"Meanwhile, others joked: "Props to the camera going back in time and sharing this song to the people back in the 1900's," “GRWM to go to titanic” and “POV 2060 kids looking at our old TikTok videos in the future."

But all is not what it seems as the video isn't actually from the 19th century, nor was AI involved.

In fact, the original video was recorded in 2024 by four theatre students - Erin McGerty, Evie Coombes, Sophie Cook, and Aimee Olley - who very much from present day and was posted by the Bristol Institute of Performing Arts (@bipauk).

The "1900s" TikTok that went viral was edited to look like the footage was older than it was, so no AI was used to created the footage.

Speaking to Yahoo, the second-year musical theatre degree students say they filmed the dance on 22 April after Coombes showed them the trend.

"We had like five underskirts on, so as you can imagine, it was quite hard to move around," Olley commented, noting how "difficult" it was to dance in the dresses.

Here is the original video:

In response to suggestions that AI was used, the four said this is "bizarre" but McGerty guessed this may have been down to "...the way that some of the videos have been made, they made it look quite fake."

The group are set to be "costume interpreters" for the Victorian ship Brunel’s SS Great Britain at the end of May to improve their improv skills where they will act as passengers from 1852 for week, with this experience and the video being part of their “Living History” project.

As Bristol's number one visitor attraction, where ticket prices begin at £22.

At the venue, there two museums along with the restored ship as well as a leading research centre, a wedding venue and a purpose built conference facility.

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.