Image of Netanyahu supporting Argentina at World Cup is AI-generated
- Published on June 24, 2026 at 16:52
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
An image spreading on social media purports to show Benjamin Netanyahu supporting the Argentinian men's national football team during the side's 2026 FIFA World Cup match against Austria. But the visual is fake, with OpenAI's image verification tool assessing it was generated with the company's artificial intelligence programs. The Israeli prime minister was hosting meetings in Jerusalem the same day the June 22 game took place in Dallas, Texas.
"Benjamin Netanyahu in attendance for the Argentina Austria game," says a June 22 post sharing the picture on X, gathering thousands of interactions before the account was suspended.
Similar posts ricocheted across X and other platforms -- also spreading in Spanish, Arabic, Persian and German -- as Argentina topped Austria 2-0 behind two goals from Lionel Messi that made the superstar the World Cup's all-time leading goalscorer. The result also clinched La Albiceleste's spot in the tournament's knockout rounds.
Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America, numbering nearly 300,000 people living mostly in Buenos Aires.
The country has emerged as one of Israel's closest allies since Javier Milei took office in 2023. The libertarian president signaled plans to relocate Argentina's embassy to Jerusalem, backed the US-Israeli war against Iran and signed the so-called Isaac Accords aimed at bolstering ties between Israel and Latin American nations.
Israel hosted an international friendly in Tel Aviv of Argentina versus Uruguay in 2019, following the cancellation of another match a year earlier after pressure from pro-Palestinian campaigners.
Football diplomacy also featured Messi, the national football team's captain, in a highly publicized 2013 visit to Israel with his then-club side Barcelona, where he was photographed at the Western Wall. He also played in the country while a member of Paris Saint-Germain.
According to the Times of Israel, a survey found more Israelis interested in the 2026 World Cup favored Argentina than any other team.
But the image depicting Netanyahu wearing an Argentina jersey at the Argentina-Austria match is fabricated.
OpenAI's image verification tool found the visual contained a SynthID -- the invisible watermark integrated from Google that the company is now using to embed signals in AI-generated media created with its platforms (archived here and here).
It determined the content "was generated using OpenAI tools."
The synthetic image detector available via the InVID-WeVerify toolkit similarly found "strong evidence suggesting that this image is synthetic."
The Hive Moderation tool, another AI detector, likewise concluded the image was "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content," attributing it to ChatGPT. And Unsurface, a media authentication tool that uses peer-reviewed methods to detect synthetic content, also determined that it was "likely AI-generated."
The Argentina-Austria match was played June 22, 2026 in Dallas, Texas.
That day, Netanyahu hosted meetings in Jerusalem, including with Bosnian Serb politician Željka Cvijanović, according to his social media (archived here and here). The day prior, he spoke at an event, also in Jerusalem (archived here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the World Cup here.
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