Soldiers fighting in burning cities, fighter jets falling as a result of missiles being fired at them, and drones destroying tanks... Images that look very real, but are in fact taken from war video games such as "Arma 3", which fuels a torrent of misinformation through Internet.

Clips from this game and others, often accompanied by phrases such as "live broadcast" and "breaking news" to give it a more realistic character, were used in false information that its promoters wanted to suggest that it was related to the Russian military operation in Ukraine.

The ease with which these images fool the public, and sometimes television channels, worries researchers.

In this context, Claire Wardle, co-director of the Information Futures Lab at Brown University, told AFP that these images "remind you of how easily people can be deceived."

With the improvement of visual technologies in video games, composite images can appear real at first glance, according to Wardle, who points out that "people are required to know how to verify the validity of these images, especially how to verify metadata in order to avoid making these errors, especially from The media".

The game "Arma 3" allows the generation of scenarios for different battles with different planes, tanks and weapons.

Many players then share online videos of their adventures, sometimes altered.

An Internet user fell into the trap of images from the game developed by the Czech studio "Bohemia Interactive", published under the title "Ukrainian Counterattack", writing a comment saying, "We have to ask Ukraine after this war to train NATO forces" (NATO).

"The first war on Tik Tok"

A representative of Bohemia Interactive commented in a statement, "While we are pleased that Arma 3 simulates contemporary conflicts in such a realistic way, we are dismayed when confusion occurs with images of real battles or their use in war propaganda. We try to combat this content by reporting it to the platforms, but it is not They are very effective. For every video that is taken down, 10 more videos are posted on the Internet every day."

In recent years, images from Arma 3 have also been used to purport to be linked to the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine, misleading information often debunked by online fact-finding services.

The truth about many of these photos was revealed, one of them in November 2022 was seen tens of thousands of times, and its publishers claimed that it showed Russian tanks that were bombed with "Javelin" missiles.

According to Bohemia Interactive, these modifications expanded with the Russian war on Ukraine, which is sometimes called the "first war on TikTok" given the many images associated with this conflict on social networks.

TV channels fell into the trap

Media outlets have also fallen into the trap, including the Romanian channel “Romania TV”, which in November 2022 published an old video clip from the game “Arma 3”, presenting it as showing battles in Ukraine, even a former defense minister and official. A former intelligence officer commented on the photos as real.

In February 2022, the Romanian channel "Antena 3" also mistakenly published an old video clip from "Arma 3", and used the Ministry of Defense's spokesman to analyze it, but the latter was satisfied with commenting on the conflict in general.

There are many reasons why these fake videos are shared on social networks.

"I have a suspicion that the people posting this content are just phishers who want to see how many people they can catch," Nick Waters of Bellingcat, an online news-checking website, told AFP.

Given the uncomplicated nature of the disinformation based on clips from "Arma 3", it is unlikely that those responsible were linked to government agencies, according to the researchers.

Experts believe claims based on these clips can be debunked more easily than deepfake clips, in which artificial intelligence software is used to generate images that closely resemble reality, a technique increasingly adopted by criminal circles.

And Nick Waters points out that "detecting the falsehood of these videos (Arma 3) is not that difficult if you know what is required to detect them, but many do not have the capabilities" to monitor disinformation.