Description: Following the January 2026 U.S. raid and arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, purportedly AI-generated images and videos circulated widely on platforms including X, reportedly depicting Maduro in fabricated scenarios. NewsGuard identified at least seven manipulated or synthetic visuals reaching over 14 million views, including AI-generated photos detected via Google Gemini's SynthID watermark.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developers , Unknown image generator developers , Google and xAI developed an AI system deployed by Unknown social media account operators and Unknown disinformation actors, which harmed Nicolás Maduro , social media users , General public , General public of Venezuela and Epistemic integrity.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake technology , Unknown image generators , Social media platforms , Google Gemini and xAI Grok
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1333
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2026-01-03
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela that led to the removal of its leader, Nicolas Maduro, AI-generated videos purporting to show Venezuelan citizens celebrating in the streets have gone viral on social media.
These artificia…
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From AI deepfakes to recycled, outdated images, a surge of visual misinformation has inundated social media platforms after US forces seized Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a stunning raid on his Caracas home.
Collectively racking up mi…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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