Some people shared old videos on social platforms, falsely claiming that they showed attacks on the Venezuelan capital Caracas. People shared AI-generated photos and videos on TikTok, Instagram and
In recent years, major global events have given rise to massive amounts of disinformation on social media as tech companies have scaled back efforts to regulate their platforms. Many accounts have tried to take advantage of these lax rules to increase engagement and gain followers.
“The United States has successfully conducted a massive attack against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been captured and deported from the country along with his wife,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday morning.
A few hours later, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Maduro and his wife were indicted in the Southern District of New York and charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
“He will soon have to face the full wrath of American justice in American courts on American soil,” Bondy wrote on X.
Within minutes of news of Maduro’s arrest breaking, a photo claiming to show two DEA agents posing with the Venezuelan president spread widely across multiple platforms.
However, using SynthID, a technology developed by Google DeepMind that claims to identify AI-generated images, WIRED was able to confirm that it was likely fake.
“Based on my analysis, most or all of this image was generated or edited using Google AI,” Google’s Gemini chatbot wrote after analyzing the image being shared online. “I have detected a SynthID watermark, which is an invisible digital signal embedded by Google’s AI tools during the creation or editing process. This technology is designed to remain detectable even when images are modified, such as through cropping or compression.” The fake photo was first reported by fact-checker David Puente.
While X’s AI chatbot Grok also confirmed that the image was fake when asked by several
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