AI video of UK lawmaker calling for Netanyahu's arrest emerges after Maduro capture
- Published on January 13, 2026 at 10:23
- Updated on January 13, 2026 at 10:24
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
After Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was seized by US special forces, an AI-generated video was shared in posts falsely claiming it showed a member of parliament in the United Kingdom asking why it was considered "impossible" to capture Israel's leader and bring him to an international court. The video contains visual errors indicative of AI-generated content, and other posts sharing the clip did not conceal a watermark for OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora.
"If the United States can conduct an operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolas Maduro, an elected president, and put him on trial in American courts, then why is it impossible to capture Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel and bring him before (an) international court?" a man says in a Facebook video shared on January 6, 2026.
According to the video's Indonesian-language caption, the man is an English member of parliament.
Superimposed text on the video adds: "Why Maduro only, why can't arrest Netanyahu?"
It circulated days after US special forces captured Maduro in Venezuela's capital Caracas (archived link).
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were flown to New York -- where they both pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges -- and US President Donald Trump says Washington is now running Venezuela (archived here and here).
The same video was shared in similar Instagram and TikTok posts.
But there have been no official reports of a UK member of parliament making the remarks. Moreover, a closer analysis of the clip shows it contains visual errors indicative of AI-generated content, such as distortion around the speaker's arm.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same clip posted on TikTok on January 5 (archived link).
The January 5 TikTok video includes a floating watermark for Sora, OpenAI's text-to-video generator, which appears to have been blurred in the falsely shared posts.
The account's profile reads: "I am just turning my thoughts into videos. Most of the content is AI-generated and only for awareness and knowledge." The video is also labelled as containing AI-generated media (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation linked to the US military operation that captured Maduro.
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