- New diving dogs AI-generated video follows the cat Olympics craze
- You can try Hailuo 02 yourself for free
- Are dogs better at ‘diving’ than cats? You decide
Hot on the heels (or should that be paws?) of the AI-generated ‘cats doing Olympic diving’ video that broke the Internet a few days ago comes the natural follow-up.
Yes, it’s dogs doing Olympic diving, which opens up the possibility of a debate on who does it better – cats or dogs?
Created by TikTok and Hailuo 02 user Stanislav Laurier, the video features the same impressive physics and realistic depictions of dogs that made the cat video so successful in the first place. The way the dogs bounce on the diving board before launching themselves into a spin makes this a truly impressive piece of AI work.
And of course, the dogs look just as realistic as the cats as they walk along the diving board. It’s only when you see them doing impossible spins that you realize that this must be AI.
Like the cat video, this was created in a new Veo 3 and Sora rival called Hailuo 02, and effortlessly demonstrates how far AI video has come.
On the podium
After a few impressive dives, the video ends with a winners’ podium showing off which dogs got third, second, and first place. Here, AI lets itself down slightly, as it says “1nd” and “2st” on the podium. It’s amazing that it can get all the complicated physics of spinning dogs correct, but can’t get some simple text right.
The video was posted on TikTok, and received quite a few comments, especially from Laura Smith who perhaps hadn’t quite caught on that the video was made with AI: “Wowww!!!! This is so amazing that these clever dogs can do this!”
Other users seem to have worked it out, though, like Kaia : 3, who said, “I’m crying, I thought this was real until the Pomeranian started spinning.”
Try it yourself
Hailuo 02 is created by Chinese AI video developer MiniMax and it debuted earlier this summer.
You’ll need to create an account to use Hailuo 02 (it let me log in with my Google account), but after that, you can give Hailuo a go yourself for free. I asked it to create “A cat throwing a shot put in the Kitty Olympics 2026”
As a “non member” (subscriptions are available, starting at $95.99 – about £70/AU$147 – a year) I got 500 free points that were valid for the next 3 days, and I had to wait in a four minute queue, which was more than acceptable, after which it started to generate the video. After a couple of minutes, my video was ready, and it had only used up 25 of my points.
I’ll admit that it doesn’t look great, but that was my first attempt. More time invested in refining the very simple prompt I used would produce much better results.
So, who do you think takes the prize for best Olympic diving? Dogs or cats? Comment with your opinion below, and let’s not pretend that this isn’t exactly what AI was created for.