Google AI falsely identified Argentine activist Flavia Broffoni as a woman in a Ceuta migrant-violence video; death and rape threats followed

Claim status: Reported

On 26 August 2026, WhatsApp groups in Ceuta circulated videos and images claiming Flavia Broffoni was a woman filmed there allegedly giving pepper spray to Moroccan migrants, and she received death and rape threats.

Causal attribution: Broffoni's account to La Nación, supported by the warning email and the group screenshot shown to the outlet. One reporting chain; the threats are her report, attributed.

• News report (supports): 'Una mujer a la que no conocía le avisó que en varios grupos de WhatsApp de Ceuta estaban circulando videos e imágenes suyas y que se decía que estaba proporcionando gas pimienta a inmigrantes marroquíes'; 'Recibí amenazas de muerte, de violación y ataques en general.'

Claim status: Reported

The identification originated from a Google AI answer: a group user cropped the woman's face from the video and queried a Google AI tool with the context word 'activista'; the answer identified her as Flavia Broffoni and described her public profile.

Causal attribution: The screenshot is the evidence of the AI answer; Google neither confirmed nor denied its provenance. The claim is attributed to the screenshot account, not asserted as independently proven.

• News report (supports): Screenshot passage: 'uno de los usuarios había tomado un recorte del rostro de la mujer del video y lo había ingresado en una herramienta de inteligencia artificial de Google para consultarle quién era. La consulta incluía como contexto la palabra "activista". La respuesta identificaba a la persona de la fotografía como Flavia Broffoni'.
• News report (context): Google Argentina response: 'no pueden confirmar que la captura corresponda a una respuesta generada por sus sistemas porque no cuentan con un enlace al resultado original'; no formal report received.

Claim status: Documented

La Nación itself ran the same video through Google's search and the AI asserted the woman was a different person — a student and community manager from Quilmes — and supplied her personal data and social networks.

Causal attribution: The outlet documents its own replication test — direct evidence that the tool produces false identifications from this input; the second misidentified person is not counted as harmed (no virality-driven harm to her is reported).

• News report (supports): 'Este medio también probó utilizar la búsqueda de Google a partir del video de la mujer que filmó en Ceuta, y la respuesta de la IA fue afirmar que se trataba de otra persona, una estudiante y community manager oriunda de Quilmes, de la cual brindó datos personales y redes sociales.'

Claim status: Reported

Broffoni says she is not the woman in the video and was in Patagonia, having last visited Spain in 2014; she also notes there is no evidence the real woman distributed pepper spray, and that tests by other people with the same photo sometimes produced refusals and sometimes 'muy probablemente' her, justified partly from outdated photos.

Causal attribution: Her account; the factual impossibility is uncontested in the inspected reporting. The real woman in the video is unidentified and the pepper-spray claim about her is unverified.

• News report (supports): 'Yo estoy en la Patagonia, Argentina y nunca tuve relación con lo que está ocurriendo allá. La última vez que estuve en España, si mal no recuerdo, fue en 2014'; the 'tres mentiras' analysis; the others'-tests passage ('muy probablemente', short brown hair vs her current long grey hair).