Wave of AI videos falsely depict Israeli airstrikes in Syria
Israel escalated its military strikes on Syria on Wednesday, with footage claiming to show the destruction as projectiles hit buildings in Damascus
CLAIM: Videos posted to TikTok claimed to show the situation in Syria as Israel unleashed bombs on the city of Damascus.
BACKGROUND: Israel launched a round of airstrikes on Damascus on Wednesday, hitting the Ministry of Defence and the presidential palace. It came after the Syrian regime forces entered Sweida to quell sectarian violence in Sweida between Druze and Bedouin tribes.
METHOD: Using Google’s AI detector tool, SynthID, several videos of the airstrikes were confirmed as ‘Made with Google AI’. A visual analysis of other footage showed it was also made with AI.
RATING: An AI detection tool and visual analysis confirmed the videos to be false.
Israel escalated its military strikes on Syria on Wednesday, July 16, with strikes on the Ministry of Defence and the presidential palace in Damascus.
The strikes came as Syrian regime forces clashed with Druze fighters in the southern Druze-majority city of Sweida.
Syrian forces entered Sweida on Tuesday to quell sectarian violence between Bedouin tribes and armed Druze, leading to a short-lived ceasefire that broke down hours after it was declared.
As with any fresh conflict escalation, the news brought with it a flood of content online claiming to show the destruction as the airstrikes hit buildings in Damascus.
Google’s new AI detection tool picks up widespread Veo usage
Many of the videos posted on TikTok, purporting to show the situation in Syria, immediately raised suspicion.
This video was published to TikTok by an account called moviecenter50, which seems to focus entirely on AI-generated videos showing extreme weather events and active conflict zones. In recent days, their posts have focused on Ukraine, Texas, and New Mexico.
On July 16, the account published the video with onscreen text saying “Syria Today” and “16_july_2025”. The caption was a collection of Syria and war-related hashtags, including #WarFootage, #RealFootage, and #DroneView.
Interestingly, the footage bore what appeared to be a news channel logo in the top-right corner. A reverse image search on the logo did not yield any results.
Despite its claims of being #RealFootage, the video was using a TikTok label that said: “Creator labelled as AI-generated.” While useful, these labels appear very small on the screen, and are clearly often ignored by viewers, as can be seen in the comments.
We used Google DeepMind’s new SynthID software, a watermark detection tool which scans for watermarks that are embedded in all Google-made AI-generated or AI-altered content.
SynthID confirmed that this footage was created using its AI, most likely its text-to-video model Veo.
Another similar video was posted by a different account, this time called seconddateupdate200. Like the last example, this account frequently posts footage showing destroyed buildings in Ukraine, Iran, and after recent flooding, New Mexico.
Just like the last video, this one features an identical caption. It is also a short video — just eight seconds — and it features a building in flames and a sea of rubble covering the street.
This video was also confirmed as Google-made via the SynthID Detector.
Next, a nighttime shot. This video posted to TikTok by military.ai.legen was posted on July 17. The account name included ‘AI’, and it did not appear to be hiding its use of AI to illustrate current stories of war. Despite this, it did not use the TikTok label for creators to label their content as AI-generated.
SynthID also picked this video up as entirely generated by Google’s AI model. Furthermore, the real news footage showing the escalation was filmed during the day.
Yet another example of AI footage was also found on TikTok, which had racked up close to 135,000 views. It showed a huge mushroom cloud rising into the sky in a city, and included onscreen text saying, in French: Israel has just bombed Syria, the presidential palace in Damascus was targeted.
This video did not bear the TikTok label for AI-generated content, but a tiny logo in the corner of the footage showed it was created by Veo. This was confirmed by the SynthID Detector.
AI-generated footage created to show real location
There was other footage which we suspected of being AI-generated, but which did not get flagged as Google-made by the tech company’s tool.
The video showed a projectile flying through the air before striking what was described as the Syrian Defence Ministry building.
A frame-by-frame visual analysis shows some inconsistencies in the footage. The frame before the projectile hits the building, the scene appears in high quality. In the next frame, the building becomes noticeably more pixellated. While moving between frames as the projectile comes down, and analysing the speed of travel, it appears as though the weapon causes an explosion in the building before it has reached the target, detonating too early.
In the frames that follow, as the people apparently ‘filming’ in the foreground are rattled by the explosion, the camera’s point of view shakes, but the vertical format of the video remains the same, making the image tilt to the side during some frames, in an apparent attempt to imitate camera shake.
The video is seven seconds long, which is a typical short length for an AI-generated video. Furthermore, the user labelled it as AI-generated, although as we have seen, the employment of this label is self-imposed and inconsistent across the platform, and the content may still require further inspection.
The footage claimed to show the Syrian Defence Ministry, which can be seen via satellite here. Real images of this building have been widely published by news outlets during and after strikes by Israel that targeted the building.
A visual comparison of the buildings show that while the video version of the building is similar, it is not an exact match. In the video, we seem to be looking at the back of the complex, which is open with a courtyard in the middle. However, all available views of the real ministry building show that the building design seen in the video, in particular the upper façade near the roof, does not exist in reality.
News footage from Wednesday filmed by Al Jazeera — here and here — shows the building as it was on that day.
This analysis confirms that the footage is false and was created with AI. Amid the speedy development of high-quality AI-generated videos, and the increasing tensions roiling much of the world, this story is another reminder of how viewers must practise extra vigilance about everything they see online.
SOURCES
Tiktok.com. (2025). TikTok – Make Your Day. [online] Available at: #SyriaAttack #Damascus #Suwayda #WarZone… [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].
Tiktok.com. (2025). TikTok – Make Your Day. [online] Available at: #SyriaAttack #Damascus #Suwayda #WarZone #DroneStrike… [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].
Tiktok.com. (2025). TikTok – Make Your Day. [online] Available at: @military.ai.legen [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].
Tiktok.com. (2025). TikTok – Make Your Day. [online] Available at: 🚨🇮🇱🇸🇾Israël vient de bombarder la Syrie. Le palais présidentiel à Damas a été visé. [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].
Tiktok.com. (2025). TikTok – Make Your Day. [online] Available at: Israel attacks on Syria defense ministry Headquarter #israel #syria #war [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].
Youtube.com. (2025). Available at: Israel Launches attacks on Syrian defence ministry and near presidential palace [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].
Youtube.com. (2025). Available at: Israel bombs Syrian army HQ in Damascus as fighting escalates in Suwayda [Accessed 17 Jul. 2025].