HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Purportedly AI-Generated Images and Videos Reportedly Spread Misinformation About Nicolás Maduro's Capture on X

January 3, 2026

Post-January 2026 U.S. raid and arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, allegedly AI-manufactured images and videos proliferated across platforms such as X, purportedly portraying Maduro in doctored scenarios. NewsGuard identified at least seven manipulated or synthetic visuals amassing over 14 million views, including AI-generated photos flagged via Google Gemini's SynthID watermark.

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Alleged deployer
unknown-social-media-account-operators, unknown-disinformation-actors
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-image-generator-developers, google, xai
Alleged harmed parties
nicolas-maduro, social-media-users, general-public, general-public-of-venezuela, epistemic-integrity

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1333

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.