AI-generated images spread amid Canadian farmer demonstrations
- Published on November 25, 2025 at 19:24
- 2 min read
- By Gwen Roley, AFP Canada
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Protests advocating for greater agricultural sovereignty sprung up in Canada in November 2025, but some images spreading on social media of an apparent tractor roll demonstration were generated by artificial intelligence. Warped details indicate the visuals are synthetic -- and one account pushing them is a Pakistan-based page impersonating a Canadian public figure.
"Did you support our farmers ??" asks a November 23, 2025 post on X.
The post reshares an image depicting scores of tractors rolling though a city with signs calling to "Save Canadian Produce Farms!" The same account shared a similar image earlier in the month depicting farm vehicles in a snowy rural setting.
Both images also spread via X and Facebook.
Following the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's controversial cull of some 400 ostriches in British Columbia province on November 6, calls spread for a "farmer's protest" against what advocates said was government overreach (archived here). Local media reported that several protests took place across Canada on November 22.
Much of the promotion for the farmer protests used tractor imagery, evoking scenes from previous European demonstrations (archived here and here).
But farm equipment was absent from many of the images of the actual protests highlighted in reports and posted to social media (archived here and here).
The tractor-heavy pictures spreading online appear to have been created using artificial intelligence.
The signs seen in the tractor roll images contain garbled text, indicating that they were AI-generated. Warped faces and Canadian flags with non-descript red circles -- instead of the flag's signature maple leaf -- also suggest the images are inauthentic.
The Hive Moderation detection tool rated the two pictures as "likely" to contain AI-generated content.
Reverse image searches traced both of the pictures to a Facebook page called "Tamara lich," which had previously posted other apparently synthetic visuals of farmer protests.
The name appears to reference Tamara Lich, a leader of the 2022 "Freedom Convoy" to Ottawa that may have inspired the farmer protests. But the real Lich posts on a separate Facebook page (archived here).
The Page Transparency section for the imposter "Tamara lich" profile says the account is based not in Canada, but in Pakistan (archived here).
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
