AI-generated clip of Louvre jewel heist spreads online

"Louvre jewelry heist footage," says the caption of a 10-second clip posted to Instagram October 20, 2025. 

The sequence shows two men wearing yellow vests who -- under the watchful eye of an accomplice dressed in the same attire -- place an item into a black bag while an alarm sounds in the background.

Shards of glass can be seen on the left, and an intact crown in its display case on the right. The perpetrators exit through a window at the end of the video after one of them shouts, in French: "Let's go!"

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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken October 23, 2025

The video rocketed across platforms including X, TikTok, YouTube, and in French-language posts on Facebook, as the October 19 heist sparked a political controversy and reignited debate around the security of French museums.

But while many seemed to believe the video was authentic, it was generated by artificial intelligence.

Distinctive signs of AI

Using reverse image searches, AFP surfaced a French-language TikTok version of the video in which the "Sora" logo is visible. The watermark indicates that the visual was generated by software from OpenAI, the American company that created ChatGPT.

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Screenshot from TikTok taken October 22, 2025, with elements outlined by AFP

The clip also features several visual anomalies indicative of AI, including:

• The position of the hand of the person supposedly filming the scene with their smartphone. The hand appears to be reflected in an empty space, not by a mirror.
• The way in which one of the burglars exits through the window. He appears to step to a spot where there is no visible item supporting his weight. 

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Screenshot from TikTok taken October 23, 2025, with elements outlined by AFP

Additionally, the shape of the display cases and their arrangement in the room do not correspond to the true setup of the Apollo Gallery, as seen in a YouTube video uploaded by the Louvre Museum (archived here).

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Screenshot from YouTube taken October 22, 2025

At this point in the investigation, the only publicly released footage of the burglary from inside the museum was broadcast by the French news network BFMTV (archived here). It is a very short sequence, filmed from a distance, in which only one of the four burglars can be seen.

The thieves clambered up the extendable ladder of a stolen movers' truck and, using cutting equipment, broke into a window of the first-floor gallery containing jewels.

They dropped a diamond- and emerald-studded crown as they fled down the ladder and onto scooters, but they still made away with eight pieces of jewellery worth an estimated $102 million.

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Infographic showing the exterior and interior of the Louvre Museum's Apollo Gallery, in Paris, where thieves stole crown jewels on October 19 (AFP / Olivia BUGAULT, Sabrina BLANCHARD)

Laurence des Cars, the Louvre's director, admitted the thieves had taken advantage of a blind spot in the security surveillance of the museum's outside walls.

The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, reopened October 22 after three days of closure, but the Apollo Gallery remained closed.