Images of pre-election rallies in Bangladesh are AI-generated
- Published on February 10, 2026 at 07:32
- 2 min read
- By Rasheek MUJIB, AFP Bangladesh
Thousands of flag‑waving supporters have attended rival political rallies across Bangladesh's capital Dhaka in the weeks leading up to elections on February 12, but images purportedly showing the massive crowds were made using AI. The images contained visual inconsistencies indicative of synthetic content and have been flagged as likely AI-generated by detection tools.
"Seeing Jamaat's popularity, the BNP has now become bewildered," reads the Bengali-language caption of a Facebook image shared on February 1, 2026, referring to the frontrunners in the upcoming election, Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The image appears to show a man speaking from a podium in front of a sea of people.
"Today is BNP's mass rally," reads the caption of a similar Facebook image shared on January 26.
The image, which was shared over 4,000 times, shows a massive crowd with some people holding up colourful banners and flags.
The same images were also shared elsewhere on Facebook, after Bangladesh began official campaigning for highly anticipated general elections on February 12, the first since the 2024 uprising ended the autocratic rule of Sheikh Hasina (archived link).
Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia in November for crimes against humanity for the deadly crackdown on protesters in her failed bid to cling to power, remains in hiding in India.
While tens of thousands of flag‑waving supporters have attended weeks of rival rallies across the sprawling capital Dhaka, the circulating images were made with AI.
The first falsely shared image contains multiple visual inconsistencies indicative of content generated with the help of AI.
For example, the group at the front of the crowd appears to be an unnatural, mangled collection of people.
An analysis of the image using SynthID -- a detector launched by Google to identify AI-generated content -- showed the first clip was created with the help of Google's AI tools (archived link).
The second falsely shared image also contains multiple visual errors often found in AI-generated content.
The purported BNP flag contains a distorted letter "B" and the other flags flown by the crowd do not resemble the party's flag, those of other organisations or the Bangladesh national flag (archived link).
A "Meta AI" label can also be seen in the image's bottom-right corner.
Moreover, an analysis of the image by the Hive Moderation AI video detector determined that it was "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content" (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked other false claims about Bangladesh's upcoming election.
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