Exposing Venezuela Celebration Footage and AI Images of Maduro.
Synthetic pictures claiming to show Venezuela's president under arrest following his capture by the American authorities have garnered many millions of impressions on social media.
How AI Images of Maduro Surfaced Rapidly
The first inauthentic AI image apparently showing him taken off a aircraft emerged shortly after. The picture was not shared any authoritative American sources; it was instead published on X by an account describing itself as an “AI video art enthusiast”.
We’ve checked the SynthID tool, which found the image was produced or modified with generative AI.
Additional synthetic pictures started circulating in the subsequent period, seemingly depicting different views of the leader detained. Visible watermarks on these pictures show they were posted by an Instagram profile named ultravfx.
SynthID confirms all of these pictures were also created or altered AI technology.
Authentic Image Posted but Fakes Persisted
The former US president posted the first real photo of Nicolás Maduro handcuffed aboard the USS Iwo Jima on Saturday morning. But even after this real photo was released, AI-generated images persisted online but were modified to incorporate the grey tracksuit seen on Maduro.
Online investigation indicate these updated fakes were originally uploaded on the video platform by a graphic design account. Once again, SynthID found these subsequent pictures were produced with Google AI.
Key Points:
- AI-generated content spread rapidly following the news of Maduro's capture.
- The initial fabricated image appeared within hours on platform X.
- Detection software like AI-watermark detectors were used to identify the pictures as inauthentic.
- Fake images continued to spread and evolve even after the publication of real photographs.
- The origin of several fakes was traced to social media profiles dedicated to graphic design.
