Images of banknote bearing Min Aung Hlaing's face are AI-generated
- Published on April 10, 2026 at 11:54
- 2 min read
- By AFP Thailand
After Myanmar's pro-military lawmakers elected junta chief Min Aung Hlaing as president in April, posts shared an AI-generated banknote featuring his face. There are no official reports the central bank issued new banknotes, while visual inconsistencies and AI detection tools indicate the image is fabricated.
"Brothers and sisters, we now have Min Aung Hlaing money," reads a Burmese-language Facebook post shared on April 3, 2026.
The post shares two images of a 200,000 kyat ($90) bill bearing the face of junta chief in civilian clothing.
The images surfaced alongside similar claims on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok on the same day the coup leader was voted as president of the war-torn Southeast Asian country by the pro-military parliament (archived link).
Min Aung Hlaing led the February 2021 military coup which ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, triggering a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
The presidential election was the culmination of a series of coordinated moves following a landslide win for pro-military parties in a heavily restricted poll overseen by the junta (archived link).
Comments indicate some users believe the claim.
"He is making the money worthless," reads one comment.
"If they release the money with his face, I will use it as a toilet paper," says another.
But there are no official reports that the central bank released a new banknote and the images are AI-generated.
Visual errors
A keyword search found the Central Bank of Myanmar last announced the issuance of a new banknote -- a 20,000 kyat bill-- on July 23, 2023 (archived link). There had been no announcements on the release of a new banknote since then.
A close inspection of the images also found visual errors in the Burmese text.
The banknote's serial numbers combined Burmese letters with the English alphabet, while a lion -- commonly depicted in Burmese iconography and also known as Chinthe -- appears to be distorted.
"Myanmar Central Bank" is used in the fabricated images instead of "Central Bank of Myanmar" typically seen in authentic bills (archived link).
Google's SynthID detection tool also identified with a "Very High" degree of confidence that the images were created with Google AI (archived link).
AFP previously debunked similar AI-generated images of new banknotes in Myanmar.
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