France protests: fact checked

Footage of mass protests across France flooded our feeds over the weekend, but not everything being shared on social media is genuine, or even related to recent events.

Students across France have been holding demonstrations against poor classroom conditions and underfunding in education since late September. On 17 October, a national day of action backed by student groups, unions and the Yellow Vests movement led to several violent incidents, which have been widely reported on.

But one dramatic image showing protesters throwing fireworks and waving Palestinian flags at the foot of the Eiffel Tower isn’t real. It contains an invisible SynthID watermark, indicating it was made or edited with OpenAI tools such as ChatGPT, the OpenAI API or Codex. There are some visual inconsistencies too: several people in the background seem to blend into each other and into the smoke.

A viral video that appears to show people hanging large Palestinian and Jordanian flags from the top of the Eiffel Tower isn’t real either.

When we put the video through Meta’s AI detector it indicated the clip had been created using generative AI.

There are also visual clues that the footage isn’t real, including sections of the tower not matching up with real photos of the landmark and the metal frame warping and blending into itself when the video pans up.

An image of an elderly couple in their underwear was shared thousands of times online with claims they were stripped and robbed during the recent riots in France.

But this picture also isn’t real and was made with artificial intelligence. There haven’t been any official reports confirming such an attack on an elderly couple like this either. The public prosecutor's office told French newspaper Libération on 19 October that it had (translated with Google) “received no reports to that effect to date”.

We’ve also seen a video of police using shields and batons during a protest circulating online with captions suggesting the footage shows the recent student protests in France.

But this video has actually been online since at least March 2023.

During breaking news events it can be difficult to differentiate between authentic and fake images, or to know if an image has been shared in the right context. Our misinformation toolkit can help you check if an image is authentic before you share it.