Image of prisoner found ‘deep underground’ in Syria is AI

An image is being shared on social media with claims it shows a prisoner who has been found underground in Syria, but it’s not a real photo and was created using artificial intelligence.  

In the image, a bearded man can be seen looking up fearfully from what appears to be an underground passage. A post shared the image on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption: “A prisoner was just found deep underground in Syria. His expression says it all. He never expected to be found…” The post has since been deleted, but it had more than 1,000 shares and a screenshot of it has been shared on Facebook. 

This comes after Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted as Syrian rebels seized the capital Damascus unopposed on Sunday 8 December. 

Syria’s White Helmets civilian rescue service says it is investigating reports from survivors of Saydnaya prison near Damascus that people are being detained in hidden underground cells. Authorities in the area report that prisoners are being freed but are appealing for former prison workers to provide them with codes to open locked underground doors.  However, the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) has said “there’s no truth to the presence of detainees trapped underground”, and said the prison’s last detainee was released on 8 December. 

Genuine videos have been shared of prisoners being released.

This particular image of the bearded man was shared online before the Assad regime was toppled. 

The image is a screenshot from a TikTok video which had over five million views at the time of writing and shows a man emerging from a hole seemingly holding some kind of large spider. The video is clearly AI, as the hands holding the spider are not attached to the man’s body. It was shared on 4 December with the caption: “No sir, I don't like it #fyp #creepytok #crawlspace #ai”. 

The account posting the video has shared several other videos depicting similar scenes. Its bio says: “Yes, everything is AI, c'mon”. 

The former president Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum. His deposition follows 13 years of civil war that killed over 500,000 people and more than 50 years of the Assad family’s rule.

You can find more of our work debunking claims relating to the Middle East on our website. 

This is not the first time we’ve seen content most likely created using AI being shared as if it’s real—we’ve previously written about an image appearing to show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using a ventilator and a distressed child with a puppy during flooding in the US. 

We’ve written guides on spotting AI-generated images, as well as deepfake video and audio.