Two men detained in China for sharing AI-altered 'gay pandas' photo

An AI-manipulated photo of two pandas showing same-sex behavior has led to two Chinese men being detained by local authorities.

The 29-year-old and 33-year-old were arrested for "maliciously” associating queerness with certain Chinese cities, according to The Washington Post. The men allegedly shared the AI-manipulated image of pandas at the “panda capital” of Chengdu, which is in the country’s southwest.

Authorities suspended the two men’s social media accounts for allegedly spreading misinformation in the guise of real news. The AI-altered photo posted on social media featured a made-up headline along with the image of the male pandas mating.

“Chengdu: Two male Sichuan giant pandas successfully mate for the first time without human intervention,” the photo’s captions reads, according to the Post.

“This case has been described as a stigmatization of Chengdu, because many netizens joked that homosexuality is so widespread in the city that even pandas there turned gay,” lawyer Wang Xuetan of Shezhen, Chinga, told the outlet.

Though the news post was false, these arrests are part of a broader and longer-standing crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights across China that has also targeted writers and other content creators who feature LGBTQ+ storylines and content. Misinformation is rampant on social media, but very few posts on something falsely generated are criminalized, leading to arrests – unless it has to do with LGBTQ+ content.

ShanghaiPride has been indefinitely suspended since 2021, and dozens of LGBTQ+ accounts have also been deleted from WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app.

In 2023, China banned rainbow attire and in that same year, the Beijing LGBT Center made an announcement that their advocacy and support center would close, then immediately ceased operations indefinitely. In 2025, China removed two popular gay dating apps from the Apple store.

“There used to be a vibrant gay scene in Chengdu, and LGBTQ people there were highly visible and welcomed,” Kenneth Cheung, a Hong Kong-based activist and the founder of LGBTQ+ rights group Rainbow China, told the Post. “Now, that culture increasingly faces challenges.”