AI-generated video falsely shared as 'jet shot down by Pakistan army'

"Pakistan Army is destroying these sophisticated French-made Indian fighter planes after shooting down with laser weapons when they reach Pakistani airspace," reads a Bengali-language Facebook post on May 7, 2025. 

It features a nine-second long video of a helicopter apparently lifting a damaged fighter jet.

A woman can be heard speaking in Urdu in the background, saying: "First learn how to fly and come to fight later. Useless pilots put India in a new defeat."

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Screenshot of the false post taken on May 8, 2025

The nuclear-armed neighbours engaged in four days of missile, drone and artillery attacks which killed at least 60 people and sent thousands fleeing, in the worst violence since India and Pakistan's last open conflict in 1999.

A United States-brokered ceasefire announced by President Donald Trump on May 10 put an end to the fighting, hours after the nuclear-armed rivals accused each other of violating the truce that brought them back from the brink of all-out war (archived link).

New Delhi blames Islamabad for backing an April 22 attack in a tourist town on the Indian-run side of disputed Kashmir, which killed 26 people. Pakistan denies the claim. 

Pakistan's military spokesperson said it downed five Indian jets on May 7, though India has not acknowledged the claim (archived link). 

The purported video of a downed jet appeared elsewhere on Facebook with similar claims it was shot down by Pakistan, as well as the reverse claim that it was a Pakistani jet that got stuck in a tree as it attacked India.

In fact, the clip was first shared on a Morocco-based page that regularly uploads AI-generated imagery.

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video led to a higher quality clip posted by an Instagram account called  "AI in Life" on May 3, days before India said it launched strikes on Pakistan (archived link).

The caption of the post reads 'Wonderful', with several hashtags including for "wildlife", "nature" and "art". The post's only has the sound of aircraft engines in the background.

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Screenshot of the false post's video (left) and the Instagram video (right).

The footage also contains several visual inconsistencies that indicate it was generated with AI, including a rotor on the helicopter's tail that appears floppy and a tree in the background that appears to blur as the jet is lifted past it. 

Despite the meteoric progress in Generative AI, errors still show up in AI-generated content. These defects are the best way to recognise a fabricated image. 

AFP has debunked a wave of misrepresented visuals in the India-Pakistan conflict.