Does a real video show a Palestinian and Jordanian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in October 2026? No, that's not true: An online tool concluded that the video was 99.1% likely to be AI-generated and a visual inspection showed people in the video appear out of proportion to the tower's actual size. Lead Stories found no matching reports from established news outlets and there is no evidence that any such event took place.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) by the @RosaneBonoro account on X on Oct. 18, 2026. Translated from Portuguese, it read:
Congratulations, @EmmanuelMacron
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @RosaneBonoro on X.)
The video is embedded below:
Parabéns, @EmmanuelMacron Você destruiu Paris. 🤦🏻♀️ https://t.co/6l77BaUjmr
-- Nanibarbosa (@RosaneBonoro) October 18, 2026
Video analysis
Lead Stories ran the video through the Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool (archived here), which concluded that it was 99.1% "Likely to be AI-Generated Image":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Another indicator that the video was created using AI is that the people appear to be out of proportion to the size of the tower. A side-by-side comparison of a real image (archived here) and the fabricated image shows that the people in the fabricated version appear much taller than they would in real life:
(Image source: the EUtouring website and a post by @RosaneBonoro on X.)
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from established news outlets using the search terms: "Palestinian," "Jordanian," "flag," and "Eiffel Tower."
Background
France has experienced widespread protests and unrest (archived here) over rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. On Oct. 18, 2026, demonstrations in Paris and other cities were accompanied by clashes with police, fires, looting, and property damage. French authorities reported thousands of arrests, while the government condemned the violence.
