Does a real image show an elderly couple wearing only underwear standing near masked rioters, after they were apparently robbed of their clothing and possessions? No, that's not true: Images circulating on social media were made with OpenAI tools and contain a SynthID watermark. The unverified story about the attack on this couple in Place de la République in Paris was repeated on a BFMTV news broadcast by a journalist, Dominique Rizet, who said he learned of this situation from a police message.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @WarMonitor3 account on X on Oct. 18, 2026. It read:
Last night in Paris an 80 year old couple were robbed by rioters and made to take all of their clothes off.
This photo is widely circulating of them being assisted by police after the incident.
This is what the picture looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @WarMonitor3 on X.)
Lead Stories uploaded the image to SynthID.com where the detection tool found there was a SynthID watermark (archived here). This tool can detect a digital watermark, developed by Google DeepMind and placed in images, audio, and video by AI tools from various SynthID partner platforms: Nvidia, OpenAI, Google and Kakao (pictured below).
(Image source: SynthID.com.)
Lead Stories uploaded the image to the Verify tool from OpenAI (archived here) where the tool determined that the image was generated using OpenAI tools (pictured below).
(Image source: OpenAI.)
An Oct. 18, 2026, article (archived here) in Mariefrance explains the origins of the unverified story, which was part of a live evening broadcast by BFMTV on Oct.17, 2026. A Facebook copy of the BFMTV clip (archived here) is embedded below. The person speaking is Dominique Rizet, a journalist who works with BFMTV as a consultant on police and judicial affairs (archived here). The broadcast featured a live feed showing nighttime street scenes with police and firefighters, barricades and debris -- this broadcast does not show the elderly couple in question. The chyron text on the broadcast, translated to English, reads:
Dominique Rizet, Police and Justice Consultant, BFMTV
URGENT LOOTING IN PROGRESS AND SCENES OF CHAOS IN PARIS
ALERT PARIS protest
Scenes of chaos in France
Lead Stories used Clipchamp to transcribe the French language in the 34-second clip. Rizet did not say he witnessed the incident but that he read about it in a message from a police source. Here is what Rizet said translated to English using the advanced setting in Google Translate (archived here):
Here's my take.
We're learning all sorts of things like this; we're receiving messages -- I'm getting messages from police officers saying that victims of looting are calling the station in tears. In Paris, people are calling us, crying -- and it's completely understandable.
I just read -- and this is coming from police sources -- that an 80-year-old couple was attacked at République. They were stripped of their belongings and left practically naked in the middle of Place de la République. An 80-year-old couple -- and in the coming hours, we're likely to hear about many more incidents like this.
I'm telling you, by tomorrow morning -- we've been through so much...
It appears that an image was fabricated after the fact to provide visuals that match the story. Lead Stories tried to find the first source to publish the AI-generated image, and used Sorsa API to convert the posting time to UTC. The X account @DolceVenezia74 posted the image (archived here) on Oct. 18, 2026, at 10:28:14.975 UTC, about two hours before @WarMonitor3.
A post by the Police Officers and Commissioners Union @PoliceSCSI was widely shared on X, but is no longer available. This post was not archived by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine or Archive.is. A CheckNews article (archived here) from Liberation on Oct. 18, 2026 reports that the image of the elderly couple in their underwear had been shared by the @PoliceSCSI account. A search for the post (archived here) on X shows other accounts sharing the now-broken link to the post on Oct. 18, 2026. An article from 21News (archived here) transcribed the tweet, including the now-broken link to the post and a link to an image that is also no longer available. Translated to English, it reads:
According to reports on #BFMTV , a couple in their eighties were allegedly attacked, robbed of their belongings, and left practically in their underwear in Place de la République, on the sidelines of the #October17th violence . At this time, these events have not been officially confirmed... pic.twitter.com/5tTIM4DnOc
-- Police Officers and Commissioners (@PoliceSCSI) October 18, 2026
At the time of writing, the 21News article was updated (archived here) to remove the text of the @PoliceSCSI tweet (above) and to add quote with new reporting from TF1info. In the updated Oct. 19, 2026 TF1info article (archived here) is a brief statement from the Paris prosecutor's office:
It remains to be seen whether such an attack actually took place. When questioned on this matter, the Paris prosecutor's office told us Monday evening that it had
"no evidence to that effect." Speaking to TF1info, they urged"caution"regarding this account, which is unconfirmed.
Another version of the AI-generated image was circulated by @FranceNews24 on X on Oct. 18, 2026 (pictured below). This copy (archived here) appears to be more focused, but also makes apparent some glitches typical of AI-generated content. A fleshy non-specific appendage appears on the hip of the right-side rioter. On the left there appear to be two masked rioters speaking with the woman, but the amorphous figures only have two feet in total. The woman, who seems to have only three or four fingers on her left hand, appears to be barefoot but also seems to be standing on a pair of shoe soles. The people in the background also appear to have doubled faces and missing limbs. The OpenAI Verify tool also determined this image was made with OpenAI tools (archived here).
This is what the picture looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @FranceNews24 on X.)
Another image posted on X (archived here) on Oct. 18, 2026 shows the elderly couple, dressed only in underwear and with a blur applied, walking away on a street littered with bricks and broken glass. This image also has a SynthID watermark identified by the OpenAI Verify tool (archived here).
This is what the picture looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Jonnywsbell on X.)
