AI-generated videos allegedly depicting protests in Iran are flooding the web, researchers said Wednesday, as social media users push hyper-realistic deepfakes to fill an information gap amid the country’s internet restrictions.
US disinformation watchdog NewsGuard has announced that it has identified seven AI-generated videos depicting protests in Iran. The video, created by both pro-government and anti-government sides, has been viewed a total of around 3.5 million times across online platforms.
They included a video shared on Elon Musk-owned Platform
One X post featuring the AI clip, shared by what NewsGuard described as dissident users, received about 720,000 views.
US dissident X and TikTok users also posted an AI video depicting Iranian protesters symbolically renaming a local street after President Donald Trump.
One such clip shows a protester changing a street sign to read “Trump Street” as other demonstrators cheer, overlaid with the caption “Iranian protesters rename street after Trump.”
President Trump has repeatedly spoken in recent days about coming to the aid of the Iranian people over a crackdown on protests that human rights groups say has killed at least 3,428 people.
President Trump said Wednesday that he had heard that the killing of protesters in Iran had stopped, but added that he would “wait and see” about the threat of military action.
Pro-regime social media users also shared AI videos purportedly showing large-scale pro-government counter-protests across the Islamic Republic.
The AI creations highlight how visual content, which experts call “hallucinatory,” is rampant on social media during major news events and often overshadows real images and videos.
In this case, experts said the AI creators were filling an information vacuum created by an internet blackout imposed by the Iranian regime to quell protests.
“There’s a lot of news, but there’s no way to get it because of the internet blackout,” said Ines Chomnares, an analyst at NewsGuard.
“Social media users overseas are turning to AI video generators to advance their own narratives about the unfolding chaos.”
The fabricated video was the latest example of AI tools being deployed to distort rapidly evolving breaking news.
AI hoaxes, often amplified by partisan actors, have fueled alternative realities surrounding recent news events, such as the U.S. detention of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and the shooting death of an immigration officer in Minneapolis.
AFP fact checkers also found false news images that created misleading coverage of Iran’s largest protests since the declaration of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
A month-old video purporting to show a demonstration in Iran was actually filmed in Greece in November 2025, and another video purporting to show protesters tearing the Iranian flag was filmed in Nepal during last year’s protests that toppled the Himalayan nation’s government.
