The images are amazing.
A warship fires a dramatic barrage of fire at a rapidly descending plane.
The plane dodged it and flew across the deep blue sky, bursting into flames and crashing into the sea.
It looks like a military victory.
The only problem? It’s not real.
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This vision appears to be from a popular military simulation video game called War Thunder.
The clip has been viewed more than 7 million times on X, where it was posted as “Iranian plane vs. US ship.”
More than 15,000 people have liked the video since it was posted on March 2nd.
The clip was reportedly reshared by Texas Governor Greg Abbott before being quickly deleted.
Most of the comments are skeptical, with many questioning whether this is an AI creation. Some people seem to believe it’s real.
RMIT digital media and visual communications expert TJ Thomson said the scale of the conflict and rapid advances in generative AI technology are making it difficult for people to distinguish fact from fiction.
“We’re looking at billions of images a day. Hundreds of thousands of hours of video are being generated a day. This is being generated through cameras and now through AI. It’s just a huge amount of data and media to understand and work with,” Dr. Thomson told ABC NEWS Verify.
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”It definitely clouds and confuses our information environment, making it even more difficult to understand and trust what is happening.”
Spreading misinformation
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The video that claims to show the attack on the US embassy in Saudi Arabia is actually a car accident that took place earlier this year.
A quick check of a widely shared photo, which users claimed was of an Iranian drone attack on a U.S. military base in Iraq, revealed it was generated or edited using AI.
Dr Thomson said that with rapid advances in AI technology, people will soon no longer be able to believe their eyes.
“Unfortunately, I think we’re definitely getting there,” he said.
“We’re seeing so much AI content, and there’s so much AI out there, that in some cases it makes us question legitimate, independent, accurate information.
“We’re in this really tough and difficult time where, despite rapid advances in technology, our ability to deal with and respond to it hasn’t quite caught up.”
AI confusion
Despite some AI tools aiding efforts to examine material related to this conflict, artificial intelligence is also yielding less reliable information.
As reported by NewsGuard, the AI summary generated by Google produced an inaccurate summary of images related to the conflict.
ABC NEWS Verify found that a similar instance of Google Lens’ AI mode overview was generating incorrect information related to the conflict, including:
- It misidentified an image from a video of a fire in Abu Dhabi in December 2025 and suggested it showed the aftermath of Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone strike in March 2026.
- It has been suggested that a recording of the video game ARMA uploaded to YouTube showed an attack on Iran by the US and Israel.
- Other images from other ARMA archives suggest they depict explosions from missile and drone attacks on Iraqi cities on March 2.
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Dr Thomson said the way people interacted with the news also made it difficult to find the truth.
“The majority of people use smartphones to view online content,” he said.
“About 80% of people are looking at very small screens and quickly researching things on social media.
“This doesn’t give us the opportunity to put things under a very high level of scrutiny.”
fact and fiction
Dr Thomson said the impact could be far-reaching.
“AI is certainly a beautiful and wonderful thing, and it has productive, pro-social, and beneficial uses, but it also has big problems,” he said.
“When people do not trust experts and fact-checked information and evidence, there is a huge potential for collapse, social discord, polarization, organizational fragmentation, and decision-making based on emotion and emotion rather than evidence.”
He gave advice to people who want to avoid being deceived.
“Focus on sources, trusted sources, rather than individual content.”
he said
“Pause before you share, or pause before you reshare, and ask yourself, ‘Was this particular content or this claim reshared by a reputable, trusted organization?'”
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