Failure reference · 105 documented failures
The AI video failure reference.
Every failure mode catalogued across Runway, Sora, Veo, Luma, Kling, Pika, Hailuo, and Seedance — grouped by type, with the exact technical term to cite with support and a usability-impact assessment for each.
Cluster · anatomy
Limb & Anatomy Artifacts
Extra fingers, fused limbs, anatomically impossible body geometry.
Anatomical
Extra arms, fused fingers, interpenetrating geometry, impossible joint configurations.
Anatomical
Extra fingers, fused digits, impossible hand geometry in Veo close-up shots.
Anatomical
Limbs morphing, extra joints, anatomy that violates constraints during Kling motion sequen…
Anatomical
Limb distortion, fused fingers, supernumerary digits, or facial morphology drift in Hailuo…
Skeletal
Sora output contains anatomically impossible human or animal bodies — extra fingers, doubl…
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, thumb pointing backward, palm/back inversion.
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, knuckle bending in impossible direction.
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, thumb pointing backward, fingers melting mid-clip.
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, thumb pointing backward, fingers melting mid-clip.
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, thumb pointing backward, fingers melting in motion.
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, knuckles bending laterally, fingers melting in motion.
Hand-Anatomy
Wrong finger count, fused knuckles, knuckles bending laterally, fingers melting in motion.
Anatomical
Extra limbs, fused joints, interpenetrating geometry, impossible articulation in Vidu outp…
Manual
Six fingers, fused knuckles, fingers passing through objects, impossible grip configuratio…
Cluster · face
Face Distortion
Identity drift, melting features, asymmetric anatomy across frames.
Facial
Asymmetric eye placement, morphological drift across frames, non-Euclidean proportions.
Facial
Asymmetric eye placement, jaw drift between frames, non-Euclidean facial proportions in Lu…
Facial
Asymmetric eye placement, facial morphing across frames, expression drift in Seedance clos…
Facial
Sora output shows face morphing, identity inconsistency, or feature distortion between fra…
Identity
Google Veo output shows facial feature distortion mid-clip or identity change across cuts …
Identity
Face morphing, identity drift, asymmetric distortion, features melting across frames.
Identity
Face morphing, identity drift, asymmetric distortion, features melting across frames.
Identity
Face morphing, identity drift, asymmetric distortion, features melting across frames.
Facial
Subject's face morphs between identities, features collapse, eyes/nose misalign across fra…
Cluster · physics
Physics Collapse
Gravity, collisions and rigid-body behaviour break mid-clip.
Physics
Fluid inversion (water flowing upward), object collision failures, gravity violations.
Physics
Particularly common on Luma: water flowing upward, smoke imploding, cloth interpenetration…
Physics
Fluid inversion, gravity violations, object interpenetration, and impossible collision beh…
Physics
Veo output violates fundamental physics — fluid inversion, floating objects, broken gravit…
Physics
Pika output produces visually plausible motion that violates Newtonian mechanics — inverte…
Physics
Kling output violates Newtonian physics — gravity inverts, mass conservation breaks, chara…
Statistical
Minimax Hailuo output produces motion that violates basic physics — objects float, mass ch…
Physics
Gravity violations, fluid inversion, missing collision response, objects falling in wrong …
Cluster · text
Text Rendering & Hallucination
On-screen text becomes glyph soup or invents words that were not prompted.
Glyph
Unreadable characters, glyph hallucination, encoding artifacts on text elements.
Glyph
Text in the prompt renders as non-letters, mirrored glyphs, or unrelated characters in Veo…
Glyph
Prompted in-scene text renders as garbled glyphs, mirrored letters, or unrelated character…
Glyph
Text in the prompt renders as non-letters, wrong characters, or unreadable glyph soup.
OCR-Coupled
Sora output contains visible text that is misspelled, illegible, or replaced with non-Lati…
Symbolic
Text on signs, screens, books, labels comes out as gibberish or hallucinated words.
Cluster · promptAdherence
Prompt Adherence Failure
Model ignores the prompt — wrong subject, wrong action, wrong scene.
Semantic
Sora output ignores or contradicts explicit prompt instructions — wrong subject, missing k…
Text
Runway output ignores the prompt entirely, producing generic motion unrelated to the reque…
Camera-Conditioning
Veo output uses a static camera or generic camera motion instead of the dolly, pan, crane,…
Text
Luma output partially or completely ignores the prompt — wrong subject, wrong action, wron…
Cross-Attention
ByteDance Seedance produces output that ignores significant parts of the prompt — wrong su…
Prompt-to-Generation
Output ignores key prompt specs — wrong subject, missing actions, wrong setting.
Cluster · camera
Camera Motion Artifacts
Jitter, drift, ignored camera directions, unintended shake.
Camera
Camera movement contradicts the prompt: jitter on a static shot, stutter on a smooth pan, …
Cinematographic
Specified camera move (orbit, dolly, push-in, crane) drifts off the requested path mid-cli…
Parasitic
Camera pose jitters or shakes unprompted on static / slow-moving shots, creating unwanted …
Camera-Conditioning
Veo output uses a static camera or generic camera motion instead of the dolly, pan, crane,…
Camera
OpenAI Sora ignores explicit camera motion direction (dolly-in, pan, crane, orbit) and pro…
Camera
Unrequested handheld shake, jittery camera path, micro-tremors despite "smooth" or "tripod…
Camera
Camera shake, micro-jitter, or unstable framing in clips prompted for a static or smooth c…
Camera
Persistent jitter or shake in clips prompted for static, locked-off, or tripod camera.
Camera
Camera shake, micro-jitter, or unstable framing in clips prompted for a static or smooth c…
Camera
Camera shake, micro-jitter, or unstable framing in clips prompted for static or smooth cam…
Camera
Camera path drifts off-axis, jitters frame-to-frame, or executes the wrong move type.
Cluster · motion
Motion & Temporal Failures
Motion blur overload, drift, flicker, broken temporal coherence.
Motion
Stalled motion, jittery movement, near-static output, or tempo drift on Pika generations.
Motion
Motion direction or tempo doesn't match the prompt; speed shifts or motion stalls during S…
Inappropriate
Heavy motion blur applied to static frames, slow-moving subjects, or background elements t…
High-Frequency
Stroboscopic flickering, inter-frame luminance discontinuities, motion blur artifacts.
Motion
Veo output contains stilted, repeating, or frozen motion segments — subjects move 1 second…
Temporal
Luma Dream Machine output exhibits motion stutter, frame freezing, or directional drift mi…
Temporal
Motion stalls, frames near-duplicate, subjects freeze mid-action despite continuous prompt…
Cluster · watermark
Watermark Bleed
Model leaks the licensor watermark into clean output — major usability blocker.
Watermark
Paid-tier output is delivered with the free-tier watermark visible — a billing-feature def…
Provenance
C2PA provenance watermark or Sora logo persists in the visible frame on paid-tier output w…
Watermark
Kling paid output retains the free-tier watermark, has watermark fragments bleeding into t…
Tier-Conditional
Pika Labs output retains a corner watermark or "Pika" branding even on paid Standard / Pro…
Watermark
Visible Seedance watermark, brand logo, or training-data brand bleed in paid-tier output.
Watermark
Watermark visibly bleeds through Vidu paid-tier output despite watermark-removal entitleme…
Cluster · audioLipSync
Audio Sync & Lip Sync
Lip movements detached from speech; ambient audio missing or warped.
Audio-Visual
Audio drift relative to mouth movement, footsteps, or scene events; cumulative timing erro…
Multimodal
Veo 3 outputs silent track, mismatched ambience, or stylistically wrong audio relative to …
Phoneme-Viseme
Mouth shapes (visemes) don't correspond to audio phonemes — closed mouth on vowels, open m…
Phoneme-Viseme
Lip movement does not correspond to spoken phonemes; mouth opens on consonants, closes on …
Audio-Visual
Sora-generated audio drifts out of sync with the visual stream — footsteps land before fee…
Phoneme-Viseme
Kling output contains a speaking character whose mouth shape does not match the spoken pho…
Audio-Visual
Mouth movement out of sync with audio, phoneme shapes wrong, mouth open during silence.
Audio-Visual
Mouth motion lagging or leading audio, wrong viseme shape, mouth open during silence.
Audio-Visual
Mouth motion lagging or leading audio, wrong viseme shape, mouth open during silence.
Audio-Visual
Mouth motion lagging or leading audio, wrong viseme shape, mouth open during silence.
Audio-Visual
Mouth movement doesn't match audio phonemes, lips out of sync, articulation collapses.
Cluster · uncategorized
Other failures
Failure modes that do not fit cleanly into the clusters above — still well-documented in the catalog.
Tonal
White balance, exposure, or color grade shifts visibly mid-clip without any prompted light…
Multi-Agent
Two or more subjects merging, identity-swapping, or losing geometric separation during int…
Style
Selected style preset (anime, cinematic, photoreal) is ignored; output uses the model's de…
Anatomical
Extra fingers, fused limbs, joints bending the wrong way, interpenetrating geometry.
Glyph
Garbled storefront signs, scrambled letters on shirts, unreadable book covers.
Glyph
Scrambled storefront signs, illegible labels, glyph-shaped smudges instead of letters.
Training-Data
Translucent stock-footage marks, ghost logos, faint timecode bleed in clean prompts.
Training-Data
Ghost broadcast logos, faint stock-agency marks, training-data timecode bleed in clean pro…
Compositional
Dropped clauses, wrong subject, missing key scene elements, generic output ignoring specif…
Physical
Objects floating, water moving against gravity, cars rolling uphill, impossible momentum.
Anatomical
Six-finger hands, elbows hinging the wrong way, limb-through-torso geometry.
Compositional
Dropped clauses, wrong setting, missing subjects, output generic vs the specific prompt.
Glyph
Garbled signs, glyph-shaped smudges instead of letters, unreadable on-screen text.
Glyph
Storefront signs as glyph smears, brand names misspelled, screen UI illegible.
Compositional
Dropped clauses, wrong setting, missing named subjects, generic output ignoring specifics.
Anatomical
Six-finger hands, elbows hinging backwards, limb-through-torso geometry.
Training-Data
Faint stock-agency logos, translucent timecode strips, ghost broadcast marks in clean prom…
Anatomical
Six-finger hands, elbows hinging backwards, fused limbs, interpenetrating joint geometry.
Style
Style preset ignored, wrong aesthetic, missing visual treatment despite explicit cues.
Compositional
Dropped clauses, wrong setting, missing named subjects, generic output ignoring specifics.
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