AI images of Maduro capture reap millions of views on social media
Source: The Guardian
Mon 5 Jan 2026 19.32 EST
Last modified on Tue 6 Jan 2026 10.17 EST
Minutes after Donald Trump announced a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela early on Saturday morning, false and misleading AI-generated images began flooding social media. There were fake photos of Nicolás Maduro being escorted off a plane by US law enforcement agents, images of jubilant Venezuelans pouring into the streets of Caracas and videos of missiles raining down on the city – all fake. The fabricated content intermixed with real videos and photos of US aircraft flying over the Venezuelan capital and explosions lighting up the dark sky.
A lack of verified information about the raid coupled with AI tools’ rapidly advancing capabilities made discerning fact from fiction about the incursion on Caracas difficult. By the time Trump posted a verified photo of Maduro blindfolded, handcuffed and dressed in grey sweatpants aboard the USS Iwo Jima warship, the fake images with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents had already gone viral. Across X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, the AI photos have been seen and shared millions of times, according to the factchecking site NewsGuard.
Vince Lago, the mayor of Coral Gables, Florida, posted the fake photo of Maduro being escorted by the DEA agents to Instagram, saying that the Venezuelan president “is the leader of a narco-terrorist organization threatening our country”. Lago’s post received more than 1500 likes and is still up as of this writing.
Tools for detecting manipulated content, such as reverse image search and AI-detection sites, can help assess whether online images are accurate, but they are inconsistent. Sofia Rubinson, a senior editor who studies misinformation and conspiracy theories for NewsGuard, told the Guardian that the fake images of Caracas are similar to actual events, which makes it even more difficult to figure out what is real.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/05/maduro-venezuela-ai-images
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