Image of milk-cleansing ritual deploring Min Aung Hlaing's visit to Thailand is AI-generated
- Published on August 13, 2026 at 11:50
- 3 min read
- By AFP Thailand
Demonstrators denouncing the visit of Myanmar's former junta chief to Thailand in August held placards and shared cake on August 6, 2026, but an image claiming to show Thais pouring milk onto a road to cleanse the "bad omen" of Min Aung Hlaing is fabricated. An AFP reporter who covered Hlaing's visit said no incident took place and a detection tool flagged the image as created with OpenAI tools.
"Thai people are washing the streets of Thailand with cow's milk after the arrival of Min Aung Hlaing. According to Eastern beliefs, it is considered a bad omen and a sign of bad luck for a scoundrel to enter a house or a city", reads part of the Burmese-language Facebook post shared on August 8, 2026.
"When the scoundrel leaves, they wash the seats he used, the buildings he entered, the streets he walked on, and the surrounding streets with cow's milk", it added.
The image appears to show people wearing Thai-flag headbands pouring a white liquid onto a road near a truck labelled "100% raw milk from a Thai farm."
The same image alongside similar claims surfaced on Facebook after Min Aung Hlaing met with Thailand's prime minister in Bangkok on August 6, 2026, during his first visit to the neighbouring nation as civilian leader (archived link).
Min Aung Hlaing led a 2021 military coup that ousted democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering a civil war estimated to have killed more than 100,000 people on all sides.
He was installed as Myanmar's president in April following stage-managed elections that democracy watchdogs and Western nations called a sham intended to launder the junta's image.
The ex-junta chief has been on a diplomatic drive since swapping his military uniform for civilian dress, visiting India, key ally China and ASEAN member Laos.
Thailand's Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told reporters August 6 that Bangkok's diplomatic overtures were practical.
"It's not about legitimacy, it's about reality," Sihasak said.
User comments beneath the circulating post indicated that they believed the image was genuine.
"I am so happy to see it. I am also grateful", reads one user’s comment, while another person wrote: "I feel so embarrassed."
However, this image is AI-generated. An AFP reporter confirmed there was no incident of people pouring milk into the road to condemn Min Aung Hlaing's presence.
AFP distributed photos showing protesters wearing masks of the Thai and Myanmar leaders sharing a cake, a metaphor for the leaders splitting the benefits among themselves.
A closer inspection of the image also reveals visual errors typical of synthetic content, including malformed hands, distorted figures and overlapping containers.
The Thai text which reads "100 percent raw milk" is also misspelled in the image.
Ratchadamnoen Road -- which appears on the street sign in the falsely shared image -- does not match Google Street View imagery of the same road in Bangkok (archived link).
Detection software has also flagged the circulating image as AI-generated.
OpenAI's image verification tool found the visual contained an invisible SynthID watermark from Google, which the company uses to embed signals in AI-generated media created with its platforms (archived here and here). The watermarks are designed to withstand alterations such as cropping and filtering.
AFP has previously debunked misinformation related to Myanmar junta chief's visit to Thailand.
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