Incident 1406: Purported AI-Generated War Footage Reportedly Circulated Widely Online During the Opening Phase of the War in Iran

Description: Reports said that, in the early days of the war in Iran, purported AI-generated fakes showing nonexistent wartime scenes reached millions of viewers online. Their spread across social media and messaging apps allegedly distorted public perception of the conflict and contributed to information disorder.

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Entities

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Alleged: Image generator developers , Deepfake technology developers and Generative AI developers developed an AI system deployed by Social media accounts and Information manipulation actors, which harmed Social media users , People seeking information about the war in Iran , National security and intelligence stakeholders , General public and Epistemic integrity.

Alleged implicated AI systems: X (Twitter) , Unknown generative AI technology , TikTok , Social media platforms , Facebook , Image generation technology and Deepfake technology

Incident Stats

Incident ID

1406

Report Count

Incident Date

2026-02-28

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Applied Taxonomies

MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified

Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

4.1. Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale

Risk Domain

Malicious Actors & Misuse

Entity

Timing

Post-deployment

Intent

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Images depicting capture of American solders in Iran are AI-generated

factcheck.afp.com

Crashed stealth bombers and paratroopers: How to spot fake war images fooling millions

inews.co.uk

Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online

nytimes.com

factcheck.afp.com · 2026

Despite US President Donald Trump dismissing the idea of sending ground troops to Iran amid the expanding war in the Middle East, images purporting to show American soldiers captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have spread across soc…

inews.co.uk · 2026

Fake photos of the war in Iran are flooding social media, with Elon Musk's X platform breaking its own rules by allowing users to create AI pictures of real warzones.

"Iran is totally winning", reads the caption on one fake image of a downe…

nytimes.com · 2026

A torrent of fake videos and images generated by artificial intelligence have overrun social networks during the first weeks of the war in Iran.

The videos --- showing huge explosions that never happened, decimated city streets that were ne…

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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