Overview
- After President Donald Trump announced U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, he appeared Jan. 5 in Manhattan federal court and pleaded not guilty, with only artist sketches permitted.
- Fact-checkers cataloged a surge of fabricated visuals of the arrest and transfer, with NewsGuard identifying at least seven misleading items that amassed more than 14 million views on X in under two days.
- The New York Times tested multiple generators and found most—including Google’s Gemini and models used by OpenAI and X’s Grok—could rapidly produce convincing arrest images despite stated safeguards and watermarks like SynthID.
- Widely shared photos of a shaved, mustache-free Maduro in prison attire and an image purporting to show an injured Cilia Flores were flagged as likely AI by Hive Moderation and Sightengine; CNN reported Flores appeared at the hearing with bandages and bruises.
- Graphic designer Rubén Dario acknowledged creating one viral fake image, and analysts estimated nearly 70% of a sampled set of visuals from Jan. 3–7 were AI-generated or manipulated.