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Incident 1091: Purported Synthesia Avatars Used in Alleged Pro-Junta Deepfake Video Supporting Ibrahim Traoré in Burkina Faso

Description: In January 2023, AI-generated videos began circulating on WhatsApp and social media showing avatars of purported American pan-Africanists expressing support for Burkina Faso's military junta. The videos were created using the Synthesia platform. Synthesia later confirmed the videos violated its terms of service and banned the user. The source of the videos remains unidentified. The clips were shared widely
Editor Notes: This incident reportedly occurred around 01/23/2023. It was added to the AI Incident Database on 06/01/2025.

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Alleged: Synthesia developed an AI system deployed by Unknown actors and Pro-Ibrahim Traoré information ecosystem, which harmed Truth and General public of Burkina Faso.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Synthesia , WhatsApp and Social media

Incident Stats

Incident ID
1091
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2023-01-23
Editors
Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident OccurrenceSomeone Made AI Videos of ‘Americans’ Backing a Military Coup in West Africa
Someone Made AI Videos of ‘Americans’ Backing a Military Coup in West Africa

Someone Made AI Videos of ‘Americans’ Backing a Military Coup in West Africa

vice.com

Someone Made AI Videos of ‘Americans’ Backing a Military Coup in West Africa
vice.com · 2023

Bizarre AI-generated videos of people expressing support for Burkina Faso's new military junta have appeared online, in what could be a clumsy attempt to spread pro-military propaganda.

It's unclear who created the videos, but it appears th…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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