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| - A rumor circulating online in late 2024 claimed to show a photo of a massive fire at a warehouse for the e-commerce discount retailer Temu in China.
Users who posted the picture shared a caption poking fun at the inexpensiveness of Temu goods: "A 57,000-square-foot Temu warehouse in China went up in flames today. The total loss of inventory has been estimated to be as high as $56.19 USD." At least one user's post mentioned the number "$246.19 USD," while another user joked the losses amounted to "$352.45 or after a spin $38.76" — a reference to a spin-the-wheel feature Temu displays to offer deals.
For example, a Dec. 29 post (archived) from X user @DocAtCDI displayed the same image and text. The post received over 2.7 million views and 102,000 likes.
A traditional Google search and a reverse-image search displayed numerous results for the same rumor, including on the America's best pics and videos website, Facebook, iFunny, Imgur, Instagram, Threads, X and YouTube.
Many users who viewed the photo submitted comments indicating they believed in the authenticity of the fire story. For example, one user said, "Bad news for the insurers but was it really an accident? A different user who apparently didn't read the second sentence of one of the posts mentioning the joke of the $56.19 in "total loss of inventory" remarked, "That's $37.64 in total."
However, the picture was fake. Not only did the letters on the logos display in a strange manner but the lower-right corner of the image showed a watermark for Grok — the generative artificial-intelligence chatbot created by Elon Musk's company, xAI. Further, a Google News search located no reports of a recent fire at a Temu warehouse.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
The Waterford Whispers News YouTube channel previously published a video on Sept. 3 promoting the same sort of joke about a Temu warehouse fire.
A man presenting the news in a humorous fashion remarked in the clip, "And just in now, a Temu warehouse burns to the ground, costing tens of euros of damage. Chinese firefighters spent hours battling the blaze, which destroyed thousands of items at a total cost of almost 56 euros. Temu has advised customers that there's now an extra 8-week delay on top of the usual 10-week delay on all products, including french fry sportswear, tortilla baby blankets" and other items.
While we were not yet able to identify which user first posted the photo circulating in late December, a search of X did locate an earlier X post (archived) from Dec. 28 displaying a different picture of a burning Temu warehouse. That photo also showed odd text characters and a watermark for Grok, indicating it, too, was a fake.
For further reading, we recommend our article describing four tips for spotting AI-generated pictures.
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