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| - FACT CHECK: Viral Facebook Image Purporting To Show Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Is AI-Generated
A viral image shared on Facebook purports to show Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 a decade after its disappearance.
Verdict: False
The claim is false. A content detection scan using the website “Hive Moderation” reveals the image is 99% likely to have been generated with artificial intelligence (AI). A media forensics and AI expert denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.
Fact Check:
Tech expert Ian Wilson believes he may have found the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Cambodian jungle on Google Maps, according to Unilad. The revelation follows a March statement from the Malaysian government indicating they are “open” to resuming the search for the missing plane, ABC News reported.
The Facebook image, which has received 15,000 likes as of writing, purports to show Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 a decade after its disappearance. “Hot News: Underwater Drone Reveals Location of Malaysian Flight 370 After Years of Mystery,” the image’s caption reads. The image, made as a collage, shows two scenes of the flight underwater and one scene of the interior of the plane. The photo showing the interior of the plane features the skeletal remains of the passengers.
The claim is false, however. A content detection scan using the website, “Hive Moderation” reveals the image is 99% likely to have been generated with AI. The results of the same scan indicate the image was probably created with VQ Diffusion.
Likewise, Check Your Fact found no credible news reports suggesting Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had been located 10 years after its disappearance. In fact, the opposite is true. USA Today reported the image is AI-generated on June 11. Additionally, Malaysia Airlines has not publicly issued a statement commenting on the claim.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, according to The Associated Press. The flight, carrying 227 passengers, was headed to Beijing when it “disappeared from air control radar 39 minutes after leaving Kuala Lumpur,” the outlet reported. The jet is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean but a search of the area did not find any remains. (RELATED: Post Claims To Show Damaged SU-57)
Dr. Walter Scheirer, a media forensics and AI expert at the University of Notre Dame, denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.
“This post claiming to show Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is obviously fake. The images of the plane do not match the actual appearance of the plane found in photographs published in professional news outlets. All of the images in the post are cartoon-like in appearance, and are likely the product of AI image synthesis and/or manual image editing. The divers in the top image are very poorly rendered. The skeletons in the bottom left panel more resemble Halloween decorations than victims on the bottom of the ocean,” Scheirer said.
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