Pro-Israel accounts spread fake AI images of Turkish air…

In August 2024, social media platforms saw the rapid circulation of AI-generated images falsely claiming that Turkish-made Siper or Hisar air defense systems had been deployed near the presidential palace in Damascus. These fabrications emerged amidst heightened regional tensions following recent military strikes in Syria.

What happened

The images, which appeared to show missile launcher structures near the Syrian presidential palace, were quickly identified as fraudulent. Defense industry analyst Arda Mevlutoglu confirmed the visuals were an obvious artificial intelligence product, pointing to structural inconsistencies in the depicted launchers as evidence of their synthetic nature. The dissemination of these images occurred approximately one week after Israel executed eight airstrikes on the Abu al-Duhur military airbase in Idlib province on August 18. Following the strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that the action was taken to prevent Turkish military entrenchment, a claim explicitly rejected by both the Syrian Foreign Minister and the Turkish Ministry of National Defense. The fake imagery served to exacerbate the existing diplomatic friction between Türkiye and Israel, leveraging synthetic media to propagate false narratives regarding Turkish military positioning in Syria.