Video of British PM castigating Israeli counterpart over Lebanon bombing is AI-generated
- Published on June 1, 2026 at 11:05
- 3 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
As Israel continued its deadly strikes in southern Lebanon, social media posts shared an AI-generated video of Britain's prime minister lambasting his Israeli counterpart and saying defence agreements and support would be reviewed. While Keir Starmer has called on Israel to halt its bombing campaign, there are no reports of him making the remarks depicted in the video, which contains errors that are telltale signs of synthetic content.
"British Prime Minister Mr Keir Starmer has begun to openly condemn the cruelty and crimes of the Israeli regime," says the Indonesian-language caption of a Facebook video shared on May 1, 2026.
The video supposedly shows Starmer speaking from the despatch box in parliament.
He appears to call his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu "the devil" and says the "genocide being committed in Palestine and now in Lebanon is completely unacceptable".
"Britain will review all defence agreements and support for Israel -- enough is enough with this brutality," he concludes.
The same video was also shared in similar Facebook posts as Israel continued with deadly strikes in Lebanon's south, despite an ongoing ceasefire (archived link).
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah dragged the country into the wider regional war started by US-Israeli attacks on Iran when it launched rockets at Israel in early March, sparking heavy Israeli strikes and a ground invasion.
An April 17 truce to halt the fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah has never been observed. Both sides accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire and justify their attacks by the other's alleged breaches.
While the British prime minister has said the bombing of Lebanon must stop, warning that Israel's actions were wrong and pushing Lebanon further into crisis, the circulating video is an AI fabrication (archived link).
There have been no official reports of Starmer making such remarks, the person in the video does not sound like the British prime minister and the clip contains errors that are hallmarks of AI-generated content.
Visual inconsistencies
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared clip led to several similar videos of Starmer speaking at the UK's House of Commons (archived link).
The falsely shared clip, however, appears to depict the House of Commons as a much smaller room and with fewer rows of benches for members of parliament.
The video also contains several visual errors indicating it was created with the assistance of AI, such as misshapen limbs and a brooch that changes shape.
An analysis of the falsely shared video using the Hive Moderation AI detection tool found it was likely to contain AI-generated content (archived link).
A separate analysis of the video's audio using the Hiya voice-cloning detection tool within the Verification Plugin also identified irregularities that suggest it is very likely AI-generated.
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation targeting Starmer and false claims stemming from the Middle East war.
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