Images of Iran's supreme leader buried by rubble are AI-generated
- Published on March 3, 2026 at 08:14
- 2 min read
- By Najmi Mamat, AFP Malaysia
Iran's supreme leader was killed by joint US-Israel strikes that began on February 28, 2026, but images purportedly showing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's lifeless body buried by rubble spreading on social media are AI-generated. The images, part of a surge of misinformation online that followed the death of the Islamic republic's longtime leader, contain visual errors indicative of synthetic content and were flagged as likely created with AI by detection tools.
"International media revealed a photo of the body of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an attack by the United States and its ally Israel on Saturday," reads the Malay-language caption of an image shared on Facebook on March 1, 2026.
The image, which appears to show Khamenei lying dead surrounded by concrete rubble, was shared above video from an Al Jazeera news broadcast about the Islamic republic's longtime leader being killed (archived here and here).
A similar image appearing to show rescue workers lifting rubble off Khamenei's body was also shared on the same day in an X post, which reads: "Iran releases image of Khamenei's body beneath rubble."
The images, which were also shared elsewhere in similar YouTube and X posts in multiple languages, circulated after Iranian state media confirmed Khamenei's death following US and Israeli strikes (archived link).
Iran's Revolutionary Guards vowed to launch the "most ferocious" operation in history against Israel and US bases, which are located in Gulf countries already counting the cost of an unprecedented series of deadly Iranian strikes (archived link).
Iran initially responded to the Israel-US attack with a flurry of missile and drone strikes across the Middle East, killing at least two people in Abu Dhabi and another in Tel Aviv, before following up with a new wave after state media confirmed Khamenei's death.
But no official photos of Khamenei's body have been released, and the images circulating online have been flagged as likely AI-generated.
A closer look of the first falsely shared image, an uncropped version of which also circulated on Facebook, shows it contains a "Meta AI" label.
Khamenei's hands and fingers also appear deformed and ill-proportioned -- a tell-tale sign of AI-generated content (archived link).
An analysis on the image using the AI-detector tool Vera.ai, available on the Verification Plugin, established a high probability of the image being AI-generated (archived link).
An analysis of the second falsely shared image by the Hive Moderation AI video detector also found it was "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content" (archived link).
The rescue workers in the AI-generated image also differ from those seen in photos of rescue efforts taken by Iranian news agencies and distributed by AFP.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the war in the Middle East.
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