DeepfakeMedium
Purportedly AI-Manipulated Image Reported to Falsely Depict Taiwanese Politician Kao Chia-yu Posing With PRC Flag
- Occurred
- Dec 25, 2025
- Published
- Dec 26, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
In late December 2025, an altered image reportedly circulated online falsely depicting former Taiwanese legislator Kao Chia-yu posing in front of the PRC five-star flag, implying travel to or alignment with China. Reporting indicates the image was manipulated from a real photo taken at Taiwan's representative office in New York, replacing the Republic of China flag. Kao publicly debunked the image, citing AI-assisted disinformation and warning of political smearing ahead of elections.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic image generation technology developers
Deployers
- Unknown actors
- Information manipulation actors
Harmed parties
- Kao Chia-yu
- General public
- General public of Taiwan
- Epistemic integrity
- National security and intelligence stakeholders
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI-manipulated image used for political disinformation and smearing, causing controversy but no physical harm or legal action.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8