As Bangladesh prepares for its first elections since the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, social media posts are sharing AI-generated clips of people explaining why they are voting for South Asia’s largest Islamist party. These videos were fabricated using Google’s AI tools and come from accounts that regularly publish manipulated content in support of Jamaat-e-Islami.
“Why did you do this? “Beggars say if you vote for Jamaat, you won’t have to beg anymore,” the Bengali Facebook post said. post Shared 29,000 times since January 24, 2026.
The post features a clip of an elderly man saying he will vote for Jamaat-e-Islam, the largest Islamist party in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people. The party has gained significant momentum since the 2024 uprising that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (archives here and here).
Once againr video An image that went viral on January 11 showed a woman with her arm severed.
“I will not vote for the BNP, who are taking this bribe. If I were to vote, I would vote for size,” she said.
BNP refers to the Bangladesh National Party, one of the candidates in the election, and “size” is official symbol Jamaat-e-Islami’s (archived link).
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, along with a 10-party coalition, are the biggest candidates in the much-awaited national elections scheduled for February 12, 2026 (archive link).
Screenshot of the false post taken on January 29th (added by AFP with red cross)
The BNP is widely seen as the front-runner in the election, with party chairman Tarique Rahman, who would be nominated for prime minister if the party wins a majority, the favorite.
Rahman recently returned to Bangladesh in December 2025 after 17 years in exile in London, shortly after the death of Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first female prime minister and Rahman’s mother, on December 30, 2025 (archives here and here).
Jamaat-e-Islami started its movement in the capital Dhaka after being crushed during 15 years of Hasina’s rule (archive link).
Both posts were shared elsewhere on Facebook and Instagram.
However, the video was created using AI.
AI generated
Using SynthID (a detector launched by Google to identify AI-generated content) to analyze the images in circulation, we found that the first clip was created using Google’s AI tools (archived link).
Screenshot of SynthID Detector results
It also contains multiple visual discrepancies that indicate content. Generated by AI.
of labelAll the food names in the store visible in the background are garbled and unintelligible.
Visual discrepancies in mistakenly shared video highlighted by AFP
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the second video led to an NBC News report showing the same woman in a photo published on June 21, 2013 (archive link).
Comparison of screenshots of incorrect posts and NBC News coverage
This photo report, titled “Bangladesh collapse leaves many amputated”, describes the Rana Plaza factory building collapse in April 2013, one of the worst structural disasters in the modern world, which killed 1,129 people at a factory in Savar, Bangladesh (archive link).
An Associated Press photo by Kevin Frayer shows Rikta with his right arm severed in the rubble when he was rescued nearly 72 hours after the building collapsed (archive link).
A separate SynthID analysis of this clip also flagged it as “Created with Google AI.”
Both videos have microphones with the “Uttorbongo Television” logo on them, and this page contains many similar content created with AI in support of Jamaat-e-Islami (archive link).
Utorbongo TV confirmed to AFP on February 3 that the video was generated using AI.
AFP has previously exposed misinformation about political instability in Bangladesh.
