AI image does not show French spy caught in Burkina Faso
- Published on June 20, 2025 at 17:05
- 3 min read
- By Edie TWELLS EASTWOOD, AFP Africa
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“French spy has been captured by captain Ibrahim Traoré, president of Burkina Faso,” reads the caption accompanying a TikTok video posted on May 2, 2025.
The post was shared more than 2,400 times.
The video includes a static image that appears to show Burkina Faso’s president standing next to a man wearing an army uniform, who has blood on his face and is holding his hands in the air.
Several TikTok users have claimed that the man in the image is a French spy who was caught posing as a journalist by the name of Julien Moreau (seen here and here).
This comes several months after four French nationals who had been held in Burkina Faso over espionage accusations were freed following more than a year of detention (archived here).
The group was arrested in the capital, Ouagadougou, on December 1, 2023, and presented by the authorities as intelligence agents working for France’s Directorate-General for External Security (archived here). They were released in December 2024, with French authorities thanking Morocco for mediation in the case.
However, the claim that this image shows a captured French spy is false.
AI-generated image
A close look at the picture reveals several flaws commonly found in AI-generated images.
For example, the writing on the man’s army uniform is gibberish; it’s not inscribed in French or any real language. Additionally, Traore's hands appear deformed.
A reverse image search of the image led to the earliest occurrence of the claim we could find online: a YouTube video posted on May 1, 2025, seen here.
In the caption, after a lengthy tale about a French man posing as a journalist who is then publicly confronted by Traore for being a spy, there is a disclaimer.
“This video is a work of fiction inspired by the life of Ibrahim Traoré,” the caption reads. “The situations and dialogues depicted are entirely fictional.”
Subsequent posts circulating on YouTube and TikTok do not contain any such disclaimers, leading users to believe the image and story is real.
AFP Fact Check did not find any credible reports by international media on any French journalist being accused of espionage in Burkina Faso in May 2025.
Several AI detection tools also considered the image to be AI-generated.
Posts shared on social media with a similar claim that a French woman was caught spying in Burkina Faso were previously debunked by Euronews (archived here).
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