Video of Iranian protesters raising phone lights is AI creation
- Published on January 20, 2026 at 20:49
- 4 min read
- By Lucía DIAZ, AFP España
- Translation and adaptation Gwen Roley, AFP Canada
Widespread protests in Iran amidst an internet blackout instigated by government authorities prompted social media users to spread a video they claimed showed a march of citizens illuminating the streets with their mobile phones. But the footage was generated using artificial intelligence, its creator confirmed to AFP.
"They've all come out onto the streets in Iran, and the Iranian government has turned off the lights so that people can't be seen," says the caption of a January 10, 2026 post on Instagram. "But all the people have turned on their phone lights themselves."
The clip appears to show a large crowd of people marching through a street with their phone flashlights pointed upwards.
The video spread across Instagram, Facebook and X and also appeared in Arabic, Persian, Portuguese and Spanish posts.
Large-scale protests in Iran -- which originally broke out in December 2025 to denounce the rising cost of living -- evolved into a movement against the theocratic regime that has ruled the country since the 1979 revolution. In response to the demonstrations, Iranian authorities imposed a blackout on television and internet communications.
Details on the impact of the government's crackdown on the protests have been reported piecemeal due to the internet shutdown, but Human Rights Activists News Agency has reported 4,029 confirmed deaths.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights NGO said verification of deaths remains severely hampered due to the communication restrictions, but noted on January 19, 2026 that available information "indicates that the number of protesters killed may exceed even the highest media estimates," which reach 20,000.
Since the start of the protests, AFP has debunked several visuals misrepresented online as authentic moments from the demonstrations in Iran. The video of the crowd with the phone lights is similarly misleading.
Javier Huertas-Tato, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and a member of the institution's Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning group (archived here), told AFP in a January 12 email that there are many visual inconsistencies that indicate the footage was created with artificial intelligence.
He pointed, for example, to shadows and hands appearing spontaneously and the poor visibility of the lights reflected in the windows.
An analysis of a screenshot from the video using InVID-WeVerify, a tool co-developed by AFP, also detected evidence the visual was created using artificial intelligence.
Some of the posts sharing the fake included a watermark for the Instagram user @elnaz555. The account belongs to Elnaz Mansouri, a multidisciplinary artist who appears to regularly use AI tools (archived here).
Mansouri confirmed to AFP in a January 13 direct message that she created the video with AI. She also noted the video's creation with artificial intelligence on Instagram and X, explaining that it was meant to be a "reflection" of reality following the digital blackout in Iran (archive here and here).
The text overlaid on the video -- "All Eyes on Iran" -- echoes language used in a 2024 advocacy campaign against an Israeli strike on Rafah in the Gaza Strip, which was also illustrated by AI-generated images.
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation generated by artificial intelligence here.
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