On January 3, US forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in Caracas and flew them to the United States to face federal charges including narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Both appeared in a Manhattan court on January 5, pleading not guilty.
In the above context, an image of Cilia is being widely shared on social media in which she is seen with a bandage and bruises. The image was shared by a social media user with a caption that reads, “Trump pledged to defend the rights of protesters in Iran, and this is the proof.”
SouthCheck found that the claim is false. We found that the viral image is AI-generated.
The name on the top left corner of the image reads, ‘Samira Shuja.’ We searched for Samira Shuja on Google and found her to be a journalist. We found that in many of her posts, she adds Samira Shuja to the top left corner of the images. For instance, here, here and here.
However, we were not able to find the post on her Facebook page, thus suggesting that the post must have been deleted from the account.
Searching for the source and analysis
A Google reverse image search did not yield any source for the image. This indicated that the image could have been artificially generated.
We further compared the facial features of Cilia Flores from the viral image and found discrepancies in the facial features. For instance, the lips in the viral image are thinner than in the original images.
Moreover, an image was published by CNN US on January 7. The image showed Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, handcuffed after landing at a Manhattan helipad, on their way to court. We saw that in this image, the hair colour of Cilia is greyish, while in the viral image, it shows reddish-brown.
Moreover, we were not able to find any credible sources where the images from inside the courtroom trials were present. On the contrary, credible media outlets, such as BBC, shared courtroom sketches of Maduro and his wife instead of a representation of the courtroom.
All of this suggests that the viral image might be AI-generated. Thus, we checked if the image is AI-generated with Undetectable AI and it showed that the image is 92 per cent AI-generated.
Hence, we can ascertain that the viral image is likely AI-generated.