Did a video of the burning Eiffel Tower actually show Paris in October 2026? No, that's not true: As of publication, webcams in the French capital live-streamed footage of the unharmed landmark. Two online AI detectors determined that the viral clip of the tower being destroyed was generated by AI.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) on X where it was published by @MrEdogtagnft on Oct. 18, 2026. The caption read:
BREAKING 🚨: Mostly peaceful student protestors have burned down the Eiffel Tower.
This is what a thumbnail from the video shared in the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @MrEdogtagnft on X.)
On Oct. 17, 2026, 550,000 people joined (archived here) 110 protests against degrading learning conditions at schools and high cost of living across France, according to the government figures. Some of the rallies ended up with clashes with the police and looting incidents, leading to at least 2,400 arrests (archived here).
However, that did not destroy one of the most iconic Parisian landmarks.
As of Oct. 20, 2026, when this article was published, live broadcasts from several webcams -- for example, here (archived here) and here (archived here)-- showed the Eiffel Tower intact:
(Image source: Meteo Paris.)
As of publication, the official Eiffel Tower website (archived here and here) said that it was available for attendance:
(Image source: Toureiffel.paris.)
Lead Stories checked the site's official accounts on Facebook and Instagram but they said nothing about the made-up fire.
The tower's purported destruction would have been all over the news across the globe, had the video really shown that. However, a broad search for the tower's name across Google News (archived here) showed no reports about its collapse.
Online AI detection tool Hive Moderation said that the video was 85.6% likely to have been generated by AI:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Another online tool, Sightengine, ruled that the odds of that were 99%:
(Image source: Sightengine.)
A closer look revealed glitches that are typical of AI. For example, the building in front of the tower had windows of different shape, and some of them were even missing, replaced by the wall:
(Image source: post by @MrEdogtagnft on X.)
The rumor about the Eiffel Tower being destroyed during "riots" is not new. Variations of this claim have been online at least since mid-2023. During the October 2026 wave of protests in France, social media recycled another video (archived here) that was also claimed to show the tower engulfed in flames:
(Image source: reel by @zinou_gxsr on Instagram.)
However, it was made by AI whose invisible watermark was found in a thumbnail from the clip via SynthID detection tool:
(Image source: SynthID.)
That video was first used to mislead the public about real events in 2025, as reported by AFP.
