On January 3, 2026, Donald Trump announced the capture of Nicolas Maduro on his Truth Social platform, and within hours an image that seemed to show the Venezuelan leader at an airfield flanked by US military personnel spread like wildfire.
However, clicking on “about this image” in reverse image search results quickly identifies it as being AI-generated. So where did it come from?
Washington-based AFP journalist Bill McCarthy spoke with the person who created the Maduro picture. On X, he goes by Ian Weber, and he told AFP he used Nano Banana to achieve his result with a simple goal in mind: to see whether a picture from an account with a small following could go viral.
MUSIC: AUDIONETWORK / Não Deixa Flopar /Jair Claudino Rodrigues Junior (UBC)|Guilherme Lopes Rodrigues (UBC)|Pablo Love (PRS)|Campbell E Browning (PRS)
Source
