Two images purporting to show an elderly couple in their 80s being 'stripped and robbed' during unrest in France racked up millions of views online, circulating widely on X before FRANCE 24's Observers team confirmed they were synthetic and traced them to their source.

How the images spread

The pictures travelled chiefly through far-right accounts on X.

• •Some users called them 'the most horrific image of October 17th'; others claimed 'France has fallen' and warned the rest of Europe and the UK would be next.
• •Several accounts claimed the couple were Jewish, accused French President Emmanuel Macron of failing 'the Israeli people' and compared the alleged attack to a 1941 pogrom in Ukraine.
• •American far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shared one of the images, blaming the alleged violence on a 'criminal consortium of Muslims and communists, who are unified by their hatred of the west and white people'.
• •French digital media outlet Sirenes posted one image on Instagram, and Israeli right-wing news channel C14 published it under the headline 'Islam Conquers Europe'.

Fact-checkers confirm the photos were AI-made

The France 24 Observers fact check relied on SynthID, an invisible digital watermark used to identify AI-generated content. Both images were detected as having been created using OpenAI tools, according to the team.

Visual errors in one photo also betrayed its synthetic origin:

• •A woman's hand appears to have only four fingers, with an enlarged, deformed thumb.
• •Two masked heads are attached to one body.
• •A bollard in the scene is atypical and unlike those found in Paris.

Tracing the source of the montage

Working with the European Broadcasting Union's Spotlight network and Belgium's RTBF fact-checking team, the Observers traced the images to a montage published late on October 17 by the pro-Israel account Infos-Israel.news, which was flagged as AI content. The montage contained several AI-generated images.

A matching detail sealed the identification: the same white border visible around the image in the original montage also appears in the posts circulating on X, indicating the photo was lifted from that collection.

The unconfirmed assault claim

The images fed on a real allegation. French journalist Dominique Rizet said on air on BFM that an elderly couple had been attacked in Paris, citing a police source. He later told FRANCE 24 he received the information from that source at 8:47 pm on Saturday and that it had been "confirmed".

No official photos or sources supported the claim, however. Libération's CheckNews contacted the Paris prosecutor's office, which said that as of Monday - about 48 hours after the alleged incident - there had been no reports to that effect to date. As of the report, no other credible sources or official reports had confirmed the alleged attack.