Images of 'crisis actor' at Bondi Beach shooting are AI-generated
- Published on December 19, 2025 at 04:55
- 3 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, AFP Hong Kong, AFP France
After 15 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Jewish festival on Bondi Beach in Sydney, social media posts shared fabricated images of a "crisis actor" purportedly posing as one of the victims -- a common conspiracy trope. The photos were generated using Google's AI tools, and the man pictured refuted the allegations against him after he was wounded in the attack.
Warning: Images contain graphic violence
"Here’s the crisis actor of the Bondi Beach false flag in all his fake blood glory. Joking while he gets his fake blood retouched," reads an X post shared December 15, 2025.
The image in the post supposedly shows Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer and head of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council in Sydney, smiling while he sits on the grass (archived link).
A woman applies red liquid to him next to a table with makeup products and what appears to be a production crew.
The picture spread alongside similar claims on Reddit, X, Facebook and YouTube -- including in Japanese, Turkish and Arabic.
Another X user shared a separate image of Ostrovsky with the caption: "This is a modern miracle, his head has healed and left absolutely no scar".
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Ostrovsky was accused of participating in a staged event after a selfie of him covered in blood, taken after a bullet grazed his head on Bondi Beach, circulated online (archived here).
A father and son opened fire on crowds gathering at the famous Sydney beach for Hanukkah on December 14, killing 15 people and injuring dozens more (archived link).
Police shot and killed 50‑year‑old Sajid Akram at the scene, while his 24‑year‑old son, Naveed Akram, was also shot and remains in hospital under police guard. Authorities said the assault was intended to spread fear and panic within Australia’s Jewish community.
Crisis actor allegations are a common conspiracy theory that often reemerges online after shootings and other mass casualty events, including the Israel-Hamas war.
But the images shared online were generated by artificial intelligence.
An analysis using Google's SynthID tool, launched in May 2025 to detect AI-generated content, indicated with a "very high" degree of confidence that the images were created with its systems (archived link).
Several visual inconsistencies indicative of AI-generated content appear in the image, such as the strange shapes of the man's ear, the hands of some crew members and two cars in the background that are merged into one.
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The words on the man's T-shirt are inconsistent with those on the one Ostrovsky wore when 9 News Australia interviewed him (archived link). The bloodstains on his shirt also do not match those in the broadcaster's video.
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When asked by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about the AI-generated images, Ostrovsky appealed to social media platforms to act more responsibly, adding that he would not "dignify these sick and twisted campaigns of hate and lies with a response" (archived link).
AFP contacted Ostrovsky for further comment, but no response was forthcoming.
The second image -- which spread elsewhere on X and Instagram -- was also generated with Google AI, according to the SynthID tool.
Ostrovsky's bandage is missing compared to the original image published by the Embassy of Israel in Australia on Instagram (archived link).
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AFP has previously debunked other false claims about the Bondi Beach shooting.
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