British and Irish police have reassured frightened members of the public that a 'killer' Cat in the Hat prowling the streets is an AI hoax, after videos of the Dr Seuss character lurking in dark streets went viral on TikTok.
The clips spread enough fear that they were reported to the authorities. Some youngsters in the UK and Ireland became convinced someone was out there intent on causing harm, drawing comparisons to the killer clown trend of 2016, when false rumours of a wave of organised violence swept across the internet.
After investigating, police said the videos were AI-generated and posed no real threat to the public.
The videos have been shared by a host of accounts, many of them created only within the past few weeks. One clip showing someone dressed in the original Cat in the Hat costume, captioned 'Help, what do I do?', was watched 15 million times in just three weeks.
Other posts made out that the 'killer' cat was threatening to visit certain areas. One message read: 'Kent I'm coming. Lock your doors.' In some cases, accounts posted footage apparently recorded by Ring doorbell cameras showing the creepy figure marching up to front doors.
Sleepover scare in the UK
Skye, 16, told the BBC that she was at a sleepover when everyone started watching Cat in the Hat videos at 3am. She said she wanted to go home, and that when she started walking down her friends' driveway she got "totally freaked out" that the Cat in the Hat was going to jump out, so she had to call her mum to pick her up.
Origins in Limerick and Wexford
The epicentre of the craze has been around the Irish counties of Limerick and Wexford, where a number of videos were posted purporting to show passersby encountering the cat in the street at night.
In Wexford, local Gardai were quick to dismiss the sightings as fake and confirmed the images had been made using artificial intelligence. Ireland's national police force, An Garda Siochana, is commonly known as the Gardai.
The force said it was hearing a lot about an elusive Dr Seuss character doing the rounds online, apparently causing havoc in neighbourhoods and towns across the country. It said it could rule out the issue, which it described as essentially an AI prompt that places the character into images or videos of familiar places. The Gardai added that the Cat in the Hat was not in anyone's driveway and was not currently hiding out in Curracloe.
Fake post fools South Yorkshire
The rumours quickly spread to the UK. In England, South Yorkshire Police were forced to shut down claims that a 'killer Cat in the Hat' had been spotted after a fake Facebook post appeared under the name of a made-up force called Yorkshire Police.
The fake post claimed officers were aware of reports of a suspicious figure described as a "Cat in the Hat" seen walking in the Meadowhall area at approximately 2.30am, and said a member of the public had photographed the figure and sent it in. It claimed the matter was being taken seriously, with extra patrols in the area, and asked the public to remain vigilant while insisting there was no cause for alarm.
The real South Yorkshire Police said anyone who sees posts online providing policing updates and advice should check they are from an official policing account, adding: "The cat is not out of the hat on this one... Please don't believe everything you read on social media."
The force confirmed it had not had any reports of a Cat in a Hat in Meadowhall or anywhere else in South Yorkshire, and added that there had also been no recent sightings of the character's associates Thing One and Thing Two.
