Fact check: Iran protests and AI-generated ‘MPs’
Round-up of fact checks from the last week compiled by Full Fact.
This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
Viral ‘Iran protests’ footage is actually from Greece
A video shared thousands of times online with claims it shows anti-government protests in Iran was actually filmed in Greece.
The clip, which has appeared on X and Instagram, shows people on a street throwing flaming projectiles as a fire burns, engulfing cars and trees. One post featuring the video, which has had more than 20,000 reactions and been viewed one million times, claims it shows “MASSIVE CROWDS MOVING THROUGH FIRES AND DEBRIS IN TEHRAN”.
But although there has been genuine footage of recent violent clashes in Iran, this particular video is not one of them.
We traced the clip back to higher quality footage shared on Instagram on November 2 by an account based in Greece, before the current protests broke out in Iran.
Full Fact has also been able to track down the location of the video to a street in Thessaloniki in northern Greece.
It matches similar footage shared by the video wire service Newsflare, which described violent clashes in the early hours of November 2 between “hooded youths and police forces in Thessaloniki after a massive anti-system rap concert”.
Iran’s government-enforced internet blackout and limits on foreign press mean that genuine footage from the widespread protests across the country, and independent reporting and documentation of events on the ground, has been limited.
It’s important to check that sources are trustworthy and verifiable before sharing their content on social media. Full Fact’s toolkit has tips on how to identify potential bad information online.
Fake Commons clip is AI-generated
A video which appears to show an MP asking Parliament why Israel’s Prime Minister cannot be captured and brought to court in a similar manner to the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro is not real—it was created with AI.
The clip, which has been shared widely and had millions of views across social media platforms, seems to show a question in the House of Commons from a male MP standing at the despatch box.
He says: “If the United States can conduct an operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolas Maduro, an elected president, and put him on trial in American courts, then why is it impossible to capture Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel and bring him before international court?”
The video includes apparent shots of seated MPs on the Commons chamber’s green benches, and a man wearing a chain seemingly sitting in the Speaker’s chair.
It has been circulating after the Venezuelan leader was seized in an overnight raid by US forces on January 3.
But the man shown speaking in the viral video is not a real MP. His face does not match genuine images of current serving MPs in the House of Commons.
Others shown in the video, including the person sitting in the Speaker’s chair, also appear to be AI creations. The Speaker of the House of Commons is currently Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, who looks nothing like the man pictured in his seat in the video, while all three real deputy speakers are women.
There was a discussion in the Commons chamber about the arrest of Maduro on January 5, but we’ve not been able to find anything in the transcript resembling the comments made in the video.
The earliest version of the video we’ve been able to find is a TikTok video published on January 5, which includes a watermark from Sora, an AI text-to-video generator developed by OpenAI.
The watermark, which moves around the frame, has been blurred out in other versions being shared elsewhere.
The bio of the TikTok account says: “I am just turning my thoughts into videos. Most of the content is AI generated and only for awareness and knowledge.”
