Hours after President Trump’s announcement about Nicolás Maduro’s dramatic weekend capture, social media was flooded with AI-generated deepfakes depicting the Venezuelan leader in handcuffs and even sitting with Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was previously detained in the same prison where Maduro now is in reality via NY Post.
The surge of AI-modified images blending real photos with manipulated ones confused this breaking news, as some public figures further spread the deepfake content.
“This was the first time I’d personally seen so many AI-generated images of what was supposed to be a real moment in time,” Roberta Braga, executive director of Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, a think tank, told the New York Times.
One of the fakes depicted Combs doing a weird dance in a jail cell as Maduro appears to hold back tears on a nearby jail cot. The disgraced rapper, whose s*x-trafficking case mentioned lurid use of baby oil, is then seen spraying the deposed dictator with bottles of fluid as “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” plays. The rest of the bizarre clip is a montage of the two acting like a couple while Maduro sports a blonde wig.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been locked up in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Combs spent the duration of his own trial before being convicted last year for transporting people across state lines for sexual encounters.
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson poked fun at the coincidence while taking his latest shot at his longtime nemesis Combs.
Jackson made an Instagram post of a cartoon image of Combs doing Maduro’s hair in the clink while exclaiming, “They took my oil also!” — a cheeky reference both to Combs’ sleazy habits and US plans to take over Venezuela’s oil industry.
