aThe images and videos I created after the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have flooded social media and garnered millions of views, leading experts to warn that visual cues are no longer reliable information for artificial intelligence.
Within hours of President Donald Trump announcing that Maduro had been detained, AI-generated images of the arrest and old footage purporting to show military operations in Caracas were widely shared on social media.
Elon Musk reposted an AI-generated video of a Venezuelan kneeling and crying, thanking President Trump and the United States for freeing him from President Nicolas Maduro. The video was originally published by X's account Wall Street Apes and has been viewed 5.7 million times on the platform.
An investigation by Shayan Sardarizadeh, a senior journalist at BBC Verify, revealed that the video was originally posted on TikTok by an account called Curious Mind, which regularly shares AI-generated videos. A community note below the reposted video describes the video as “generated by AI and currently presented as a statement of fact intended to mislead the public.”
Multiple errors can be spotted in the video, ranging from incorrect flag patterns to missing objects and missing teeth. The video has since been deleted from TikTok, but remains on X.
Musk continues to share multiple “AI slop” videos, including a deepfake of President Maduro breakdancing with President Trump and a deepfake of the Venezuelan president in prison with Sean 'Diddy' Combs.
He has not responded to claims on social media that the footage of Venezuelans crying was false, but has since reposted content vouching for X's accuracy.
Vince Lago, the mayor of Coral Gables, Florida, is one of many who reposted on Instagram a hyper-realistic AI-generated photo of Maduro being removed from a plane by US law enforcement officers.
Analysis by Google's SynthID detection tool revealed an invisible watermark on the content proving it was generated or edited using AI software. According to Google Gemini, this watermark is “imperceptible to the human eye but detectable by software.”
As part of a social media post using a fake image, the politician declared: “With the arrest of Nicolás Maduro earlier today, America is safer and Venezuela is one step closer to freedom.
“President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been clear from the beginning: Maduro is not the president of Venezuela. He is the leader of a narco-terrorist organization that threatens our nation. God bless our men and women in uniform, and may God continue to bless this great nation.”
The creator of the AI-generated photo of Maduro later identified himself as a Spain-based X user with fewer than 100 followers. Ian Weber, who calls himself an “AI video art enthusiast”, told AFP he never expected it to be shared so widely.
According to AFP, Trump used Google Gemini's Nano Banana Pro to create the fake message to post on Truth Social within 20 minutes of Trump's announcement.
Another AI-generated photo showed a soldier posing next to Maduro with a black hood over his head, News Guard reported. A compendium of fabricated and out-of-context photos and videos related to military operations in Venezuela.
NewsGuard, which provides misinformation tracking and other services, said seven of the misleading photos and videos it identified have now received more than 14 million views on X alone.
Benjamin Dubow, Democratic Resilience Researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), explained: independent person The AI-generated content emerged as social media users sought to fill in the information gaps in the hours after Maduro's arrest was announced.
“Mr. Maduro's arrest makes one of the biggest and most shocking news stories of the past few years. Especially on a Saturday morning, US time, hours after the incident occurred, there is so much uncertainty that very little news comes out.
“We have a press conference at 11 a.m. ET, but before that, there's already been news about this event and a lot of demands to understand what's going on and what's going on.
“There were a lot of people on social media willing to step in to fill that void,” he added. “What's interesting about what Mr. Musk shared, what the Mayor of Coral Gable shared… they were fake, but they didn't convey anything that different from what actually happened.”
He added that basic media literacy remains important in the face of the vast amount of content and misinformation online.
He said, “The best practice is to wait until you actually find a reliable source, then verify the source and make sure it's reliable, trustworthy, and up-to-date.” “The basic media literacy that existed 20 years ago still applies today.The amount of content is hundreds and thousands of times larger than it was back then, so it's a much bigger challenge.
“What's really important is that you should be the most suspicious of the content you agree with the most. It's very difficult and counterintuitive, but the content you agree with, the content that makes the most sense, is the easiest way to make you believe that it's not true,” he added.
“You will never believe anything that makes the other person look good, so their misinformation will not affect you.”
Sophia Rubinson, NewsGuard's Reality Check senior editor, said: independent person: “With AI-generated images and videos advancing to the point where visual cues are no longer reliable, it is more important than ever to approach content on social platforms with skepticism, even when shared by prominent or verified accounts.
“In situations like Venezuela, where reliable news outlets lack instant access and footage, AI-generated content and manipulated media can quickly fill the information vacuum. While these footage may not necessarily completely fabricate events, they may misrepresent the context, timing, or scale. Our ability to trust what we see on social media is rapidly diminishing.”
Not only AI-generated media but also old footage from previous incidents in Venezuela is being reused, causing further confusion. Even President Trump shared a video purporting to show a crowd of Venezuelans “celebrating” President Maduro's recent capture by the U.S. military.
Truth Social's post showed large crowds of people gathering in Caracas. The caption reads: “Millions of Venezuelans celebrate the news of the fall of the Maduro regime.”
A reverse image search of the clip revealed that the footage was actually from protests in Caracas after President Maduro's controversial victory in July 2024.
The same video was reposted on X by right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who claimed to his audience of 4.4 million followers that it was meant to celebrate “the ouster of communist dictator Nicolas Maduro.” It has been viewed 2.2 million times.
independent person We have reached out to X and Meta for comment.
