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Amid Chaos in Mexico, False Images Stoked Fears

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Amid Chaos in Mexico, False Images Stoked Fears

Online disinformation proliferated rapidly after the Mexican military killed the country’s top cartel leader, fueling fear and chaos among residents and tourists alike. Mexican officials say some A.I.-generated images and fake news reports may have been linked to criminal actors.

“There were images and videos that were not real. People started posting that the gangs were just shooting randomly and killing people in town. That wasn’t true.” “I saw that there were A.I. images of a church downtown being burned. And that really created panic for those of us that live here.” “There’s no official, like, news report. The authorities have not really said much. We’re all just kind of in the dark.” “Get inside the house.” “I’ve owned a drone for several years for content creation purposes. It really became my eyes to be able to know what was happening on the ground. It looked like all of Costco was on fire. But in reality, I took the drone out and I could see that it was just vehicles in the parking lot.” “There was a young man running at us with a gun, came around and pointed through the window at my head, and was screaming in Spanish, ‘Get out of the car. Get out of the car.’ He threw an incendiary device, a bomb or something in the car, which quickly exploded in flames. And then he did the same to the truck that was there.”

Online disinformation proliferated rapidly after the Mexican military killed the country’s top cartel leader, fueling fear and chaos among residents and tourists alike. Mexican officials say some A.I.-generated images and fake news reports may have been linked to criminal actors.

By Brent McDonald, Arijeta Lajka, Mark Boyer, Shawn Paik and Axel Boada

February 24, 2026

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