Video of US troops and vehicles on the ground in Iran is AI-generated
- Published on March 5, 2026 at 07:57
- Updated on March 5, 2026 at 09:43
- 2 min read
- By Nyan Tun SHEIN, AFP Thailand
The war initiated by US-Israeli attacks on Iran has expanded across the Middle East, but a video purportedly showing American soldiers and military vehicles in the Islamic republic was generated using Google's AI tools. There have been no official reports of US troops operating within Iran, and the circulating video contains errors and inconsistencies indicative of synthetic content.
"US soldiers are ready in Iran," reads part of the Burmese-language caption of a Facebook video shared on March 2, 2026.
The video comprises two clips appearing to show soldiers and military vehicles slowly moving through a city street at night.
It circulated as Israel and the United States struck targets across Iran, with Tehran lashing out against the region with missiles in retaliation for the campaign that killed its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (archived link).
Explosions have rung out in Dubai, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere, causing chaos with hundreds of flights cancelled and the strategic Strait of Hormuz all but paralysed.
The video was also shared in similar Facebook, TikTok and X posts in Burmese, English and Hausa.
But as of March 5 at 0800 GMT, there had been no official reports of US troops operating within Iran.
In a March 2 interview with the New York Post, US President Donald Trump -- who campaigned on promises to end US involvement in wars -- refused to rule out deploying US ground troops to Iran "if they were necessary" (archived link).
The White House said on March 4 that US ground troops in Iran are "not part of the plan" for the operation "at this time" (archived link).
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a higher-quality version which was posted on Facebook on March 1 (archived link).
It was shared on the page "DailymindAi", which encourages users to "explore the iconic wonders of artificial intelligence". The video was also flagged as being an AI creation by commenters.
A watermark reading "Daily mind_ai" can be seen in the video's bottom-right corner, seemingly covering another watermark.
A closer inspection of the falsely shared video shows it contains errors and inconsistencies that are tell-tale signs of AI-generated content. The military vehicles erroneously sport emergency lights typically found on police cars and ambulances, and some of the soldiers are positioned abnormally.
A further analysis of the video on Google's SynthID detector found there was a "very high" likelihood it was created using the platform's AI tools (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation stemming from the Middle East war.
This article was updated to include comments made by US President Donald Trump and the White House about the possibility of deploying US ground troops to Iran.March 5, 2026 This article was updated to include comments made by US President Donald Trump and the White House about the possibility of deploying US ground troops to Iran.
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