Description: Turkish national Melih Göğebakan reportedly posted a purportedly AI-generated image on LinkedIn depicting himself alongside Eric Trump while promoting the Trump Hotel Dubai project. The image appeared amid a broader online persona in which Göğebakan allegedly portrayed himself as closely connected to Trump-affiliated organizations and U.S. political figures. He was separately accused of visa-related fraud, though reporting does not establish that the AI-generated image caused those losses.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Synthetic media generation technology developers , Synthetic image generation technology developers and Deepfake technology developers developed an AI system deployed by Synthetic media creators , Scammers , Melih Göğebakan , Information manipulation actors and Deepfake creators, which harmed public figures , Eric Trump , Epistemic integrity and American public figures.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Synthetic media generation technology , Synthetic image generation technology and Deepfake technology
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1639
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2026-08-14
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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According to a White House official who spoke to Türkiye Today, Melih Göğebakan, accused of visa fraud in the US, was apprehended in an operation on July 28.
Melih Göğebakan, a Turkish citizen who claimed to be a political advisor to US Pre…
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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