{"id":101248,"date":"2026-07-10T04:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/101248\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T04:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:56:09","slug":"social-media-users-share-ai-generated-video-falsely-depicting-iran-supreme-leaders-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/101248\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media users share AI-generated video falsely depicting Iran supreme leader’s funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Massive crowds gathered in Tehran in early July to mourn Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes that sparked a regional war in late February. However, a clip circulating online that purports to show the ceremony is fabricated — the footage does not match authentic visuals of the Iranian capital, and detection software indicates it was\u00a0 generated using AI.<\/p>\n

“Approximately 40 million people participated in the funeral ceremony of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in Tehran — not including various cities across the country,” reads an X post<\/a> published July 5, 2026.<\/p>\n

The post shares a 33-second video showing aerial footage of people gathering at a large religious complex. The crowd, dressed in black, fills the streets around the site while carrying Arabic-language signs and Iranian flags.<\/p>\n

\"<span>Screenshot<\/p>\n

Screenshot of an X post sharing the AI-generated video taken on July 9, 2026, with an AI symbol added by AFP<\/p>\n

Other posts sharing the same video circulated with similar claims in\u00a0 Thai<\/a>, English<\/a>, Sindhi<\/a> and Arabic<\/a>, with one clip accumulating more than 20,000 views.<\/p>\n

The footage spread as crowds amassed <\/a>in Tehran for s ix days of public funeral ceremonies for Khamenei starting from July 4, including a dedicated day in neighbouring Iraq ( archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Mourners thronged the Grand Mosalla religious complex in the Iranian capital, where his body lay in state alongside the coffins of four other family members also killed in US-Israeli strikes on February 28.<\/p>\n

This video shared online, however, contains multiple visual inconsistencies and elements that do not match authentic photos of the Grand Mosalla.<\/p>\n

AI-generated video<\/p>\n

The clip itself depicts the same structure in different ways across several cuts.<\/p>\n

In one shot, only two minarets are visible in the complex — but seconds later, the structure features a green-roofed building and four additional minarets.<\/p>\n

\"<span>Screenshots<\/p>\n

Screenshots of the AI-generated video, with elements highlighted by AFP<\/p>\n

Google Maps satellite imagery\u00a0shows the Grand Mosalla<\/a>\u00a0with features that do not match the structure depicted in the circulating video ( archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"<span>Screenshot<\/p>\n

Screenshot comparison between the AI-generated video (L) and Google Maps satellite imagery of the Grand Mosalla<\/p>\n

AFP\u00a0also captured and\u00a0 distributed photos<\/a> of\u00a0 mourners<\/a> at the\u00a0 Grand Mosalla<\/a> on July 5 that look different from the footage circulating online.<\/p>\n

An analysis of the video using\u00a0 Hive Moderation<\/a>, an AI detection tool, found it was 99.7 percent likely to have been generated by AI ( archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"<span>Screenshot<\/p>\n

Screenshot of Hive Moderation results taken on July 9, 2026<\/p>\n

AFP has previously\u00a0 debunked<\/a> other AI-generated content<\/a> linked to Iran<\/a> and the Middle East war<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Massive crowds gathered in Tehran in early July to mourn Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,52666,369,52667,1594],"class_list":["post-101248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-iran","tag-iranian-capital","tag-tehran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}