**The Online Chaos After Nicolas Maduro’s ‘Capture’ Claim**
Yesterday morning, a statement from Donald Trump rocked the world: US troops had supposedly captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. But, as we’ve seen before, don’t believe everything you read on the internet. It didn’t take long for dodgy footage and fake images claiming to show the operation in motion started flooding social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X.
Old clips resurfaced on the web, purporting to show DEA agents and law enforcement personnel apprehending Maduro. But was this all just a big hoax?
Fast forward to now: US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that charges had been filed against Maduro and his wife in the Southern District of New York on charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and other crimes.
But the digital world wasn’t about to let facts get in the way of a good story. A fake image claiming to show the two DEA agents flanking the Venezuelan president spread like wildfire online. Thanks to WIRED’s use of Google’s SynthID technology, which detects AI-generated photos, it was likely a fake.
This technology, developed by Google DeepMind, is designed to detect images created or altered by AI. According to the chatbot, the fake image contained a SynthID watermark, a hidden signal embedded by Google’s AI tools during the creation or editing process. It’s exciting to see how technology can be used to fight disinformation.
