An AI-generated video purporting to show Venezuelans celebrating in the streets has gone viral on social media after a US military operation in the country led to the removal of leader Nicolas Maduro.
These artificial intelligence clips depicting jubilant crowds have amassed millions of views on major platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and X.
One of the earliest and most widely shared clips on X was posted by an account named “Wall Street Apes” with over 1 million followers on the platform.
The post depicts a series of Venezuelans crying tears of joy and thanking the United States and President Donald Trump for removing Maduro.
The video was then reported by Community Notes. Community Notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking feature in X that allows users to add context to posts they believe to be misleading. “This video has been generated by AI and is currently being presented as a statement of fact intended to mislead the public,” the notice said.
The clip was viewed more than 5.6 million times and reshared by at least 38,000 accounts, including business mogul Elon Musk, but the repost was eventually deleted.
CNBC was unable to confirm the source of the video, but fact-checkers at the BBC and AFP said the earliest known version of the clip appeared on the TikTok account @curiousmindusa, which regularly posts AI-generated content.
Even before these videos emerged, and before the Trump administration released real images of Maduro in custody, AI-generated images showing Maduro in custody in the United States were circulating.
The deposed Venezuelan president was captured on January 3, 2026, after an airstrike and ground assault by the US military, an operation that dominated global headlines in the new year.
Along with the AI-generated video, AFP’s fact-checking team also identified numerous examples of misleading content about Maduro’s ouster, including footage of a celebration in Chile that was incorrectly presented as a scene from Venezuela.
Misinformation from major news events is nothing new. Similar false or misleading content also circulated during the Israeli-Palestinian and Russian-Ukrainian conflicts.
However, the widespread reach and realism of AI-generated content related to recent developments in Venezuela is a clear example of how AI is evolving as a tool for misinformation.
Platforms like Sora and Midjourney have made it easier than ever to quickly generate hyper-realistic videos that appear authentic amidst the chaos of breaking news events. The creators of that content often seek to amplify a particular political narrative or cause confusion among audiences around the world.
Last year, AI-generated videos of women complaining about losing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits during the government shutdown also went viral. One such AI-generated video fooled Fox News into appearing authentic in an article, but it was later removed.
Given these trends, social media companies are facing increasing pressure to step up efforts to label potentially misleading AI content.
Last year, the Indian government proposed legislation to require such labeling, and Spain approved fines of up to €35 million for unlabeled AI material.
To address growing concerns, major platforms such as TikTok and Meta are rolling out AI detection and labeling tools, but the results appear to be mixed.
CNBC was able to identify several videos on TikTok presented as part of the celebration in Venezuela that were labeled as AI-generated.
In the case of X, the platform relies primarily on community notes to label content and is often too slow to react to prevent AI misinformation from spreading before it is identified, system critics say.
Adam Mosseri, who oversees Instagram and Threads, acknowledged the challenges facing social media in a recent post. “All major platforms will do a good job of identifying AI content, but their ability to do so will decline over time as AI gets better at mimicking reality,” he said.
“There are already a growing number of people who, like me, believe that it is more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media,” he added.
— CNBC’s Victoria Yeo contributed to this report
