Reported Use and Circulation of AI-Generated Misinformation and Fake Victim Visuals After Air India 171 Crash

Following the June 12, 2025 crash of Air India Flight 171, bad-faith actors reportedly used generative AI to produce fake videos and images misrepresenting victims and dramatizing the event. These AI-generated fakes spread widely on social media during the investigation delay, reportedly confusing even aviation professionals and misleading the public. Experts warned that the misuse exploited the grief of victims' families and amplified misinformation about the tragedy.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 4 Malicious actors
• Primary risk subdomain: 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

The incident involved bad actors intentionally using AI to generate fake crash reports, deepfake videos of victims, and fraudulent fundraising campaigns to exploit the tragedy for financial gain and manipulation.

Additional risk subdomains

• 3.1 False or misleading information: AI-generated fake preliminary crash reports containing realistic aviation jargon misled aviation professionals and news media.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was driven by human bad actors intentionally using post-deployment AI generation tools to create misleading reports, deepfakes, and fraudulent campaigns.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The incident involves 'AI-generated content such as deepfakes' and synthetic media, which fall under Risk Level 3 due to transparency obligations to inform users that the content is AI-generated.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: unspecified
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Technical Text Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown generative AI developers
• Alleged deployer: Unknown social media actors exploiting the Air India Flight 171 disaster
• Alleged harmed parties: General public, Families of the victims of Air India Flight 171, Experts investigating the Air India Flight 171 crash, Epistemic integrity

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: Yes, the reports describe deepfake videos of the crash aftermath, synthetic videos of victims, and fake cremation videos.

Directly caused: Bad actors generated and spread highly distressing deepfake videos of the crash aftermath and synthetic videos of deceased victims, including a cremation video of a victim.

Privacy

Reported: Yes, the reports describe using victims' personal photos to generate deepfake videos without consent.

Directly caused: Bad actors took a private selfie sent by victim Komi Vyas to her family and used it to generate a viral synthetic video depicting her cremation without family consent.

Inferred additional harm: Other victims' personal photos from social media or private chats were likely harvested and manipulated into synthetic videos without consent.

Psychological

Reported: Yes, the reports explicitly describe distress and grief-disruption to the victims' families due to AI-generated videos of the deceased.

Directly caused: Grieving family members, such as Komi Vyas's cousin, experienced severe distress and disruption to their mourning when viral AI-generated videos of her cremation and photos circulated on WhatsApp.

Inferred additional harm: It is highly likely that many of the families of the 275 victims experienced similar psychological distress due to the widespread fabrication of victim videos and fraudulent fundraising campaigns.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the reports describe a fake preliminary crash report and doctored images of the crash site that misled aviation professionals and news media.

Directly caused: A highly convincing AI-generated preliminary crash report using aviation jargon and details from a past LATAM incident misled news websites and aviation professionals into believing and publishing false information.

Inferred additional harm: The rapid spread of synthetic visuals and fake reports during an information vacuum eroded public trust in official channels and polluted the information ecosystem.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 275
• People reportedly exposed: 10000

Potential causes

Management

• Delayed AAIB Investigation Updates: Investigation bureau failed to hold daily briefings to counter fake news.

Technology

• AI Text Generation Platforms: Used to generate highly convincing fake crash reports with aviation jargon.
• Deepfake Video Generation: Created synthetic videos of victim cremation and passenger dramatization.
• AI Image Manipulation: Produced doctored images of aircraft ablaze or falsely positioned.

Data Inputs

• Unverified Historical Accident Data: AI used 2024 LATAM Airlines incident data to create a fake report.
• Unauthorized Victim Photos: Social media selfies of victims were used as inputs for AI deepfakes.

Human Factors

• Lack of Verification by Journalists: News websites published stories based on fake AI reports without verifying.
• Exploitation of Emotional Grief: Bad actors used AI content to run fraudulent fundraising campaigns.
• Public Susceptibility: Aviation circles and public easily misled by realistic AI reports.

Process and Methods

• Slow Official Communication: AAIB delayed official updates, creating an information vacuum filled by AI.
• Inadequate Platform Moderation: Social media platforms failed to quickly flag and remove AI misinformation.

Regulatory Environment

• Lack of Platform Accountability: Absence of strict enforcement or laws requiring platforms to label AI content.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports provide consistent and detailed accounts of the types of AI-generated misinformation (fake reports, deepfake videos, fraudulent fundraising) and their specific impacts on victims' families and aviation professionals. The role of AI as a content generation tool is clear, and the resulting harms are well-documented across multiple sources.
• Ambiguities identified: The specific AI platforms or models used by the bad actors are not identified.

Following the crash of Air India Flight 171, bad-faith actors used AI to generate highly convincing fake crash reports and distressing deepfakes of victims. While the incident caused significant psychological harm to grieving families and temporarily misled media, its national security impact remains minor as it did not threaten critical infrastructure, state sovereignty, or strategic stability.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: India
• Alleged perpetrator: Unknown

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Immediate. Exploited the immediate 72-hour information vacuum following a major aviation disaster, requiring urgent refutation by government agencies.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. AI was used as a content generation tool by human operators who actively directed the creation of deepfakes and fake reports.
• Novelty: Evolved capability. Represents a sophisticated evolution of crisis-exploitation tactics, combining synthetic media and technical text generation to target grieving families.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. The incident was strictly digital, involving misinformation, and did not impact physical critical infrastructure or cause kinetic threats.
• Information security: Minor. AI-generated fake crash reports and media misled news outlets and aviation professionals, but there was no evidence of state-sponsored intelligence compromise.
• Sovereignty: Minor. The fake report exploited a communication vacuum and forced government investigation bodies to issue refutations, causing minor operational disruption.
• Economic security: Negligible. Financial harm was limited to localized, emotionally-driven fundraising scams targeting the public, posing no strategic economic threat.
• Societal stability: Minor. The generation of distressing deepfakes of deceased victims caused localized psychological harm and violated privacy, but did not threaten large-scale social cohesion.