WASHINGTON, DC, United States (AFP) — From AI (artificial intelligence) deepfakes to recycled, outdated images, a surge of visual misinformation has inundated social media platforms after US forces seized Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a raid on his Caracas home.

Collectively racking up millions of views, the fake or misleading posts underscore a new digital reality in which hyper-realistic misinformation competes for attention with — and often drowns out — authentic images and videos following major news events.

Soon after Maduro’s capture, AFP’s fact-checkers uncovered posts on platforms such as X and Facebook purporting to show the first image of the Venezuelan in US custody, flanked by American forces near an aircraft.

But the image — which made Maduro appear younger — was AI-generated, with Google’s artificial intelligence tool Gemini detecting a SynthID, an invisible watermark meant to identify AI content.

Social media users also shared an image claiming to show an American soldier posing with Maduro, who has a bag over his head. But the image was from 2003 and shows the US capture of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, press reports from the time show.

The disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said it identified seven fabricated, misrepresented images and videos related to the US operation in Venezuela, which collectively garnered more than 14 million views in under two days on the Elon Musk-owned platform X alone.

The trend highlights how a combination of AI slop — mass-produced content created by cheap AI tools that turn simple text prompts into hyper-realistic visuals — and misrepresented visuals circulating on social media feeds is blurring the line between fiction and reality.

“While many of these visuals do not drastically distort the facts on the ground, the use of AI and dramatic, out-of-context video represents another tactic in the misinformer’s arsenal,”said Chiara Vercellone, a senior analyst at NewsGuard. “And one that is harder for fact checkers to expose because the visuals often approximate reality.”

President Donald Trump himself amplified misinformation after the US operation, sharing on his
Truth Social network a viral video claiming to show Venezuelans celebrating and running in their underwear in the streets following Maduro’s capture.

But AFP’s factcheckers found that the video, first posted on TikTok last month, showed college students participating in the ‘UCLA undie run’, a quarterly tradition at University of California, Los Angeles.

Competing with authentic news on social media was a flood of humorous AI-generated clips, with one showing Maduro and Trump dancing in the Oval Office and another depicting the ousted Venezuelan president posing alongside prisoners clad in orange jumpsuits.

Maduro appeared in a New York court on Monday, where he pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and “narco-terrorism”.

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez insisted Tuesday that no foreign power was governing her country, after Trump said Washington would “run” it pending a transition.