False: Video showing Iran’s capture of US and Israeli soldiers is AI-generated
A viral video shared on X on March 29 claimed to show Iranian forces capturing Israeli soldiers.
The 16-second clip consists of two shots of a group of men in military uniforms being restrained in a sandy coastal area, squatting or sitting cross-legged with their hands tied behind their backs. It quickly spread on X, attracting more than 15,000 likes and around 900 comments within three days.
Another post sharing the same clip alleged that Iran captured 43 American soldiers in the Strait of Hormuz. It received over 6,000 likes, even though the soldiers in the footage clearly wear Israeli flag patches on their left arms.
Most Arabic-language comments appeared to believe the claim, while several English-language comments suggested the video was likely created with artificial intelligence.
Annie Lab can confirm that the footage was generated by Google’s video creation model and does not depict real events.
NewsMeter, an Indian fact-checking outlet, analyzed the clip using Hive Moderation’s AI content detector and Google’s Gemini SynthID tool. The article said both tests indicated the video was AI-generated. Annie Lab also independently ran the SynthID tool using Gemini and verified the result
Google’s SynthID watermarks are embedded into all content made or modified using the company’s AI tools, although they are imperceptible to the human eye.
Original creator of AI footage
In the video, a watermark added by the original creator is also visible, which reads “Nanang Kocim.”
We found the creator’s Facebook account under the same name that hosted the clip, uploaded on March 28 and gaining more than 43,000 likes and 1,600 comments.
The video’s Indonesian caption translates to “They will be thrown into the sea” in English, according to Google Translate.
It was accompanied by hashtags such as “#us” and “#usa,” without specifying details about any alleged capture.
The creator labeled the post as AI-generated but did not clarify whether the video was fully generated with AI or only partially edited.
Annie Lab contacted the creator for confirmation but received no response.
Other suspected AI-generated videos related to the recent Iran crisis also appear on the same Facebook page, most carrying an AI tag.
Similar false videos and claims have circulated on social media since the escalation of tensions in Iran. AFP, CRBC news, and the Arabic-language newspaper An-Nahar have debunked AI-generated content over the past months.
In early March, a senior Iranian security official claimed several U.S. soldiers had been captured and imprisoned. The U.S. Central Command denied the claim. To date, no U.S. or Israeli soldiers have been confirmed captured by Iran.
