DeepfakeMedium
Image Purporting to Show President Paul Kagame of Rwanda in M23 Uniform Reportedly AI-Generated
- Occurred
- Jan 10, 2025
- Published
- Mar 20, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
An image circulating on social media appeared to show Rwandan President Paul Kagame wearing a military uniform with an M23 label, referencing the rebel group active in eastern DRC. Fact-checking organization PesaCheck found no credible sources supporting the image and used AI-detection tools to determine it was likely AI-generated. The image was reportedly used to imply Kagame's affiliation with M23 amid ongoing regional tensions and allegations of Rwandan support for the group.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic image generation technology developers
Deployers
- Information manipulation actors
- Information manipulation actors targeting Paul Kagame
Harmed parties
- Regional peacebuilding efforts in the African Great Lakes region
- Paul Kagame
- National security and intelligence stakeholders
- Government of Rwanda
- General public of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- General public of Rwanda
- General public
- Epistemic integrity
Tags
- deepfake
- propaganda
- disinformation
- Rwanda
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI-generated image used to spread misinformation about a political leader amid regional tensions.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8