Abdel Fattah El-Sisi AI image incident — Oct 2026

The Egyptian government’s newly launched AI platform, Chat Egypt, disabled its image-verification feature less than 24 hours after its debut at the Egypt Forum 2026. Designed to combat misinformation and verify visual content, the tool was pulled from service following public demonstrations of its inability to distinguish between reality and AI-generated fabrications.

What happened

The platform, introduced by the Cabinet’s Media Center to counter what officials term "information warfare," was intended to provide real-time verification of news and images. However, the FactCheckar initiative exposed significant flaws in the system shortly after its launch. By submitting an AI-generated image depicting the Pink Panther attending a forum session alongside President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the initiative demonstrated that the platform failed to identify the obvious manipulation.

Following this test, the platform’s image and video verification feature was deactivated and replaced with a "Coming soon" notice. Beyond the image-verification failure, independent testing by Al Manassa revealed further inconsistencies in the platform's text-based responses. When queried on sensitive economic and political topics—such as the dollar exchange rate and the status of detained journalists—the AI provided outdated information, ignored recent reports, or claimed it could neither confirm nor deny widely documented facts. Despite the platform's stated goal of building public awareness through reliable information, its terms of service explicitly state that its outputs may contain inaccuracies and create no legal obligation for the Information and Decision Support Center.