Claim: Videos show Pakistani reporters covering mass celebrations of Iran’s victory against Israel, following the recent military conflict between the two countries.
Fact: Evidence suggests that these videos were tampered with extensively, and they are likely AI-generated.
On 24 and 25 June 2025, an account on Facebook posted a string of videos showing Urdu-speaking, female reporters covering celebrations of Iran’s recent victory over Israel. The majority of the videos show massive crowds waving Iranian flags. They also contain embedded captions with romanized Urdu and some show emojis of the Pakistani flag as well, expressing the country’s support for Iran at this time. The claim does not specify where the celebrations in these videos are taking place.
Israel’s attack on Iran
On the morning of 24 June 2025, the United States and Qatar mediated a ceasefire deal between Iran and Israel—two countries engaged in an intense military “12-day conflict”. The warfare began on 13 June this year, when Israel launched an attack on Iran that killed its top military leadership, six nuclear scientists, and damaged some of the country’s key nuclear sites. The attack also struck residential areas, killing hundreds of civilians. In the successive days of the conflict, Israel struck Iran’s oil and gas facilities as well. According to a 30 June report by the Associated Press (AP), which cited the Washington-based Human Rights Activists group, more than 1,000 people were killed in Israel’s attacks in Iran, including at least 417 civilians.
Iran’s retaliatory strikes
On 13 and 14 June, Iran fired a barrage of missiles and launched drones at Israel, some of which were reportedly intercepted by Jordan and also spotted in Iraq’s airspace. According to an Israeli military official, the country’s air defences had shot down many of the 100 drones launched by Iran. On 24 June, the AP reported that up to 24 people were killed and over 1,000 injured in Israel, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.
US enters the war
The United States entered the war on 21 June 2025, striking three of Iran’s major nuclear sites. Iran retaliated by launching strikes on the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, marking one of the largest direct strikes by Tehran on “US targets in the region”.
In an effort to de-escalate tensions, President Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, which was declared effective on 24 June.
Fact or Fiction?
Independent keyframe analysis
Soch Fact Check first ran a reverse-image search of the videos’ keyframes to ascertain when they had surfaced online. The results revealed that there was no trace of these videos before 24 June 2025.
We then closely examined the videos for signs of tampering, manipulation or AI-generated content. The first sign was that the bodies in the crowd lacked basic definition. The second included bodies in the crowd morphing into others. Lastly, the flags in the videos also appeared unrealistic. These three signs are common features of AI-generated content.
Bodies in the crowd lacking basic definition can be seen most clearly in a keyframe of the video shown below:
For example, in the bottom-left corner of the frame, a flag appears to jut out of a person’s shoulder or chest, covering their face for the entirety of the video. Just to the left of the reporter’s arm, a person’s undefined face is stretched by, what appears to be, an arm that phases in and out throughout the video. In the area highlighted above the large flag, we also noticed people’s faces caving into themselves, forming straight black lines where their eyes should be. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, extra shadows appearing on the eyes and eyebrows in a video usually signals to it being a deepfake.
Secondly, we spotted instances of bodies either morphing into others or completely disappearing from the video. As noted by the media lab at MIT, paying attention to faces is key because “High-end DeepFake manipulations are almost always facial transformations”. In the keyframe below, a face in the crowd progressively morphs from a highly distorted two-dimensional figure into two combined blurred faces and then to a plain, realistic looking one:
Similarly, in the following frames, we see an undefined face (circled in green) actively shapeshifting into two others in the course of the video. In the second frame, it is seen morphing into a small face with an apparently full head of hair (something missing in the first frame) and placing a hand on another person’s shoulder. Lastly, it transforms into an even more undefined face with a red headband, raising a hand with only two or three fingers.
As noted by McGill’s Office for Science and Society, AI still struggles with properly rendering human hands, often generating “fingers that blend into one another in weird ways.”
We also noticed that the flags in the videos were held by people in a very unrealistic manner. This was most evident in the keyframe below, where the large Iranian flag shows minimal signs of being creased or pulled in different directions. In fact, only the row of people behind the flag are seen holding it up:
Visibly, the people standing in front of the flag do not appear to be holding it up at all, in spite of which the flag does not sag or fall. As MIT’s media lab notes, deepfakes often “fail to fully represent the natural physics of a scene”. Realistic images of flags held horizontally by crowds show the numerous creases in the fabric as a result of it being pulled, as seen below:
Lastly, these videos also showed numerous pockets of distortion and noise. An inability to properly render “depth of scale”, and pockets of distortion that appear “as pattern noise, flickering or unusual shifts in the background scenery”, are standard indicators of a video being generated using AI. These features are highlighted below:
Keyframe analysis with InVID WeVerify tool
Besides our independent analysis, Soch Fact Check also conducted a forensic analysis of the videos’ keyframes with the InVID WeVerify tool. The keyframes were tested with multiple detection algorithms, including GHOST, CAGI, Double Quantization, DCT, and BLOCK. These tests showed consistent white and blue-green areas in the keyframes—an indication of high levels of tampering—as shown below:
To summarise, the videos’ keyframes exhibit many signs of being artificially generated, including bodies lacking basic definition, people morphing into one another, and unrealistic appearances of flags. Moreover, a forensic analysis of the frames points to a high level of tampering with the videos. Hence, based on this investigation, it is highly likely that the videos are AI-generated.
Virality
On Facebook, AI generated videos of Urdu-speaking reporters presenting on Iran-related celebrations were seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On YouTube, they were seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, they were found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On TikTok, they were found here, here, here, here, and here.
On Threads, they were found here.
On X, they were found here.
Conclusion: Soch Fact Check’s independent investigation and results from forensic analysis algorithms strongly suggest that the videos of Urdu-speaking reporters covering celebrations of Iran’s victory over Israel are AI-generated.
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Background image in cover photo: The Friday Times
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