The man who created an AI-generated image of Nicolas Maduro that went viral has come forward, telling AFP he was shocked the fake racked up millions of views online.
The image depicting Maduro flanked by US forces exploded across social media after Washington seized the Venezuelan leader and his wife in a raid on Caracas on Saturday. Many posts called it the first photo of Maduro in custody.
But the X user who first posted the image, who goes by Ian Weber and describes himself as an “AI video art enthusiast” based in Spain, told AFP in an exclusive interview that he used Nano Banana Pro, an image generator within Google’s Gemini, to create it.
“I never expected this to become the most shared picture worldwide,” he said Tuesday in a series of direct messages on X, where his account has fewer than 100 followers.
As the news broke, Weber gave the image generator a simple prompt, according to a screenshot of the chat shared with AFP. Translated from Spanish, it read: “Nicolas Maduro detained by American assault forces. Put granular photo.”
He cropped out the Gemini watermark and posted the result on X within 20 minutes of US President Donald Trump announcing the operation on Truth Social.
“I just wanted to see if an account on X with fewer than 78 followers at the time could make a picture go viral organically,” he told AFP.
Almost immediately, it did.
Weber watched as users asked Grok, Elon Musk’s AI tool, to verify the image. In some cases, the chatbot responded that it was authentic.
Prominent accounts misrepresented the image, and further manipulated versions soon spread online.
“That was when the avalanche began,” Weber said. “Everyone was suddenly desperate to publish the first picture of his arrest.”
AFP and other news agencies quickly debunked the fake, noting that Gemini said it contained a SynthID, an invisible watermark attached to AI content created using Google’s tools.
Trump also posted an image he said showed Maduro in custody aboard a US naval ship, in which the deposed Venezuelan president appeared in a different outfit and was blindfolded.
Weber’s creation still continued to spread.
On Monday, he commented under his original post to say he created the image with AI, but the reply has almost no engagement.
He told AFP he cannot edit the post without purchasing X’s premium services, and that he has not deleted the original for fear fact-checkers would lose “traceability” of the image.
“I never intended to claim that this was the first picture of Maduro being detained,” he said. “If an account with only 78 followers can have this kind of impact, imagine what an influencer with millions of followers is capable of.”
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