AI-generated visuals depicting daughters of Thai soldiers killed in border clash spread online

Published on August 11, 2025 at 09:57
3 min read
By Chayanit ITTHIPONGMAETEE, AFP Thailand

After Thailand's top university offered scholarships to the kin of soldiers killed in the country's clashes with Cambodia, social media posts shared AI-generated images of girls purportedly holding pictures of their deceased loved ones. The images contained visual anomalies and were made with AI.

"Don't scroll past this unless you are heartless. Please extend encouragement to the students and daughters of brave soldiers who defended the land," reads part of a Thai-language Facebook post shared on August 5, 2025.

The post includes two images of girls donned in student uniforms holding framed pictures of a soldier and a scene depicting a funeral, showing a flag-draped coffin.

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on August 7, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The caption goes on: "Chulalongkorn University offers fully-funded scholarships to children and spouses of the heroes who sacrificed their lives to protect Thailand."

The post quickly gained traction, with over 800,000 likes and more than 12,000 shares.

These posts appeared after Thailand's Chulalongkorn University announced on August 4 that it would provide free scholarships to children and spouses of Thai soldiers, border patrol police, and civilians killed during a military confrontation with Cambodia (archived here and here).

Bangkok Post also reported that the Mahasarakham University of the Northeast also offered a similar scholarship while the Ramathibodi School of Nursing said it will waive entrance examination requirements for "Pimook" -- an orphaned daughter of a Thai soldier, according to Thairath News (archived here and here).

At least 43 people were killed in the conflict that ended on July 29 after a long-standing dispute over border temples erupted into violence (archived link).

A truce was brokered by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim -- chair of the ASEAN regional bloc -- after cajoling by US President Donald Trump and a team of Chinese mediators.

Social media posts shared the same images alongside similar claims on X, Facebook, TikTok and Threads.

But the images were made with AI.

A reverse image search led to more false posts, but Google's "About this image" feature identified the video as having been made with AI.

The ability to detect AI-generated images is based on Google's SynthID technology, which was launched by its DeepMind AI lab in 2023 (archived here and here).

Screenshot of the Google page indicating the video was made using AI

A closer inspection revealed tell-tale visual anomalies of images generated by AI -- including unreadable name tag on the student's uniform and a mismatched flag.

The student’s uniform features a malformed name badge, a common issue in AI-generated images where supposed legible languages are replaced with gibberish text.

Secondly, the flag shown in the funeral photo does not match the Thai national flag -- but instead resembles the flag of Costa Rica, which features similar colors with a different stripe arrangement (archived link).

AI-generated photo falsely shared by social media posts, with elements made by AFP to highlight visual anomalies

AFP has also debunked other misinformation related to the conflict between Cambodia and Thailand.

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