A video that appears to show a lawmaker asking Congress why the Israeli prime minister cannot be arrested and brought to court in a similar way to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is not real and was created using AI.
The clip, which was widely shared and viewed millions of times across social media platforms, appears to show a male lawmaker asking a question while standing at a delivery box in the House of Commons.
“If the United States can carry out an operation that captures Venezuela's elected president Nicolás Maduro and puts him on trial in a U.S. court, why is it impossible to capture Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel and put him before an international tribunal?” he says.
The video also includes shots of what appear to be MPs sitting on the green benches of the House of Commons, as well as a man wearing a chain who appears to be sitting in the speaker's chair.
The information spread after Venezuelan leader Maduro was captured along with his wife, Cilia Flores, in a nighttime raid by U.S. forces on January 3. They appeared in court in New York and pleaded not guilty to various drug and weapons charges brought by the U.S. government.
However, the man speaking in the viral video is not a real member of Congress. His face does not match the authentic image of a sitting member of the House of Representatives.
Other people in the video, such as the person sitting in the speaker's chair, also appear to be AI creations. The current Speaker of the House of Commons is Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who looks nothing like the man in the seat seen in the video, although all three deputy speakers are actually women.
Maduro's arrest on January 5 was debated in the House of Representatives, but nothing similar to the comments made in the video was found in the recording.
The oldest version of the shared video we could find is a TikTok video published on January 5th and has been viewed 5.4 million times.
This version includes a watermark from Sora, an AI text video generator developed by OpenAI.
The watermark moving within the frame is blurred in other versions shared elsewhere.
The TikTok account's profile reads, “I'm just converting my thoughts into videos. Most of the content is generated by AI and is for awareness and knowledge purposes only.” The account has also shared a number of other videos of fake political moments featuring the Sola watermark, including one that appears to be from the Scottish Parliament.
During ongoing global events, false and misleading content can spread rapidly online. Before sharing such videos, first consider whether the video is from a verifiable and trustworthy source. Our guide to identifying AI content and our toolkit on how to identify malicious information can help you do this.
