What we know about fake AI coup video sent to Macronpublished at 14:01 GMT 17 December
Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist
At an event in Marseille yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was sent an AI-generated news report claiming that he had been toppled in a coup.
Macron said he was sent the video by “one of my African colleagues”, which some French media outlets are reporting is an African president, who asked him: “Dear President, what’s happening in your country? I’m very worried”.
In the video “we see a journalist near the Élysée Palace saying there’s been a coup in France, a colonel has seized power,” Macron added, noting the clip had more than 12 million views.
Macron went on to say his team contacted Facebook but they refused to take down the video because it didn’t violate their terms of service. We have contacted Facebook for comment.
A video matching Macron’s description had been circulating on social media in the days before his comments.
Using a reverse image search we traced the video back to a Facebook account called Islam, which is based in Burkina Faso and clearly advertises that it offers training in the creation of AI videos.
The video does now appear to have been removed from Facebook along with other similar AI news reports. Due to the deletion we cannot confirm Macron’s claim about its virality, but the clip has continued to spread across online.
Nearly all of the videos posted by the Facebook account appear to be AI-generated, including more recent fake news reports about a coup in Benin which have gathered more than five million views.
