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| - An image with over one million likes on Instagram claims to show a single house standing unscathed while the surrounding neighbourhood was destroyed in the recent Los Angeles fires. But this picture isn’t what it seems—it was likely made, or at least modified, with AI.
The image appears to be an aerial photo of a red-roofed home and has been shared over 1,200 times on Facebook, with the caption: “This is the residence of a devout Christian in Los Angeles, California, where faith miraculously prevailed over flames. While neighboring houses succumbed to the inferno, this home stood unscathed, a testament to divine protection.”
The same picture has also been circulating on Instagram and Threads with similar claims about the house being spared by God.
Fires have spread across parts of LA in January, killing at least 28 people and destroying over 15,700 structures. While some houses did withstand the fires despite surrounding homes being damaged, the image being shared does not show one of them.
This image has been modified or created with Google Artificial Intelligence tools. When Full Fact put the image into Google reverse image search, under the ‘About this image’, it says “Made with Google AI”.
We asked Google about this label, and a spokesperson told us: “A SynthID watermark is detected in the image, meaning the image has been generated or modified with AI. This is exactly the sort of problem SynthID was intended to address, so we're glad to see it being put to good use here.”
SynthID is a digital watermark which is undetectable with the human eye, but embedded into content made with several Google AI products. The watermark remains detectable despite any changes made to the quality or size of the picture.
But Google added it was “not possible to confirm how or to what degree AI was used to generate or modify the image”.
However, when we searched for the image online we could find no record of that image or one similar being shared by verifiable or media outlets, or details of which area of LA it supposedly depicts. This makes it seem likely the image was completely generated, rather than just modified, by a Google AI tool.
We’ve seen several AI-generated images and videos circulating since the outbreak of the wildfires in LA, with claims they depict real scenes from the disaster.
Before sharing an image that you see on social media, it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine, and whether the source is reliable. Our guides to spotting AI-generated content can help you do this.
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