Video of explosion at Iran's Evin Prison suspected of AI manipulation

Australia Broadcast Center

7 hours ago

Doubts are being raised about the authenticity of a video being widely shared online purporting to show a strike on Iran's Evin prison.
The facility in Tehran has been the primary prison for housing political detainees since Iran's 1979 revolution, according to Reuters.
The agency said it had been the site of executions, and that several high-profile foreign prisoners were held there.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military was carrying out strikes in Tehran, including on Evin, on Monday.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa'ar shared a black-and-white video claiming to show a security camera video of a strike on the prison's gates.
The 6-second clip shows the gates of the prison, which explode just before the 2-second mark.
The straight lines of a door then wobble in an unusual way.
ABC NEWS Verify showed the video to Hany Farid, the co-founder and chief science officer at GetReal, a platform that combats the threat of deepfakes.
He is also a professor at University of California, Berkeley, specialising in media forensics.
"Unfortunately, the quality of the video is too poor for proper analysis using forensics or our models," Professor Farid said.
The forensic team at GetReal traced the earliest version of the video to a Telegram channel called "Iran Human Rights Society".
"Now is the time to help the prisoners," its post read.
GetReal also found an image of the prison from 2023.
It matches the first frame of the video, with the team noting the surrounding branches and shrubbery are "oddly bare for summertime".
"It seems more likely that an AI-powered image-to-video generator was used with this image as the source," Professor Farid said.
The top left of the video also reads "CAMERA 07" in a country where the dominant language is Farsi, not English.
ABC NEWS Verify is not suggesting there was no Israeli strike on Evin, only that this "security camera video" may have been AI-generated or manipulated in some other way.
Other videos from around the prison, showing smoke in the area, can be geo-located and verified.
This one appears to be taken from north of the prison, looking towards the back of the complex.
The purported security camera footage, in the correct location of the Israeli strike, was included in reporting by major news outlets after it was shared by Mr Sa'ar, a high-ranking minister.
Some included footnotes on their stories about the strike at Evin, after having removed the video.
"One clip purporting to show the moment of the strike as captured on a security camera appears to have been digitally manipulated, and references to it have been removed," the New York Times reads.
Verifying the video is also made more difficult as it shows a real location, which can be found on Google Street View.
Professor Farid said if the video were proven fake, it would be concerning.
"It adds to a growing and troubling trend of fake content circulating online as major world events unfold, making our understanding of what is happening and how to respond shaky, at best," he told ABC NEWS Verify.
There have been numerous examples of fake images and videos circulating since the Israel-Iran war began.
This post falsely claims to show Tel Aviv engulfed in flames, with one image showing a building carrying the logo of Rafael, an Israel-based weapons manufacturer.
This fake video was also posted online, claiming to show a downed B-2 bomber.
In the AI-generated clip, one man in the rear at the centre right of the frame appears to merge with the background, a telltale sign of manipulation.