Did French border guards mock influencers returning from Dubai?

Western influencers play a large role in promoting life in places like Dubai, emphasising their luxury and quality of life.

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Other pull factors include year-long sunshine, beaches and some of the lowest tax and crime rates in the world.

However, the image of the Gulf States as a safe haven has taken a hit following Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on the likes of Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE, in response to Israel and the United States’ own airstrikes on Iran on 28 February.

The US-Israeli attacks have sparked war in the region, with Iran targeting oil reserves, civilian infrastructure and American bases in the Gulf.

While a considerable number of influencers have posted about being safe in the UAE despite Iranian strikes and what they brand as media hysteria, others have taken to social media to share their fears about the situation, with some calling on their home governments to help them get back to Europe.

“We are French, France protect us”, pleaded French reality TV star Maeva — who lives in Dubai — while waving her passport, in a viral social media video.

But these kinds of posts have triggered a wave of sarcastic reactions and conflicting narratives across social media, with many mocking the irony of European influencers asking to be rescued by their home countries, despite living abroad and therefore not contributing to the taxes that fund such rescue missions.

Did French border guards mock influencers?

Other users shared images of French authorities appearing to join in on the banter.

In a series of social media images, French border guards appear to hold signs in airport arrival halls, which read, “To all the influencers and other people in tax havens such as Dubai, the tax authorities wish you a smooth return to France.”

However, Euronews’ fact-checking team, The Cube, found no trace of these images on any official platforms. Other signs also suggested it could be AI-generated, as the guards’ uniforms don’t match genuine ones worn by France’s official border force and they also each display different logos on their uniforms.

AI detection firm TruthScan pointed us to another series of AI indicators. For instance, although the sign they are holding seems handwritten, the French flag on it is in reality an emoji, which suggests it was either superimposed afterwards or that the entire image was made with AI.

TruthScan also compared the signage and graphics used in all the major French airports which fly to Dubai with those seen in the social media images, finding that they didn’t match.

France’s Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty confirmed to The Cube that the image was “not authentic”.

“Be wary of any image presented in a modern context that has suspiciously low-quality or added compression to it,” experts at TruthScan said. “Lower quality does not mean something is authentic; you can also observe this behaviour in the AI-generated ICE videos. It’s clear that bad actors often try to degrade the quality of AI-content to deceive viewers.”

Nevertheless, social media users need to be more and more vigilant when it comes to spotting fake and digitally-altered content online.

Ari Abelson, co-founder of Open Origins, a start-up that tackles disinformation with its own verification technology, told The Cube that clues that something was AI-generated are becoming increasingly difficult to spot.

“Tell-tale signs are changing, the ones from today may be corrected tomorrow — we are reaching the photorealistic fakes and ‘finding the fakeness’ is becoming impossible — instead, we should assume that everything is fake, unless it has been proven to be real at source,” he said.

“Essentially, we have arrived at a point in time where, unless an image can instantly prove that it’s authentically human (i.e., not AI-generated), then you should assume it’s fake,” Abelson added. “Especially for any imagery that has the potential to be politically motivated.”