Viral Images of Girls and Puppies in Hurricane Recovery Are Generated by AI – Peter Gattuso

After Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in parts of six southeastern U.S. states last week, images of the multistate disaster — and the rescue and recovery efforts that followed — quickly spread online.

However, the widespread availability and access of digital photo creation – the use of AI technology to create images – has called into question the authenticity of some viral images.

Two viral photos – both showing a worried-looking young girl wearing a life jacket and holding a puppy aboard a rescue boat – were created using AI and are not authentic depictions of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

One of the AI-generated images was shared on X by right-wing social media personality Juanita Broaddrick. “We have to help these victims,” she wrote alongside the photo. “Comrade Kamala and Sleepy Joe have failed them.”

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley and a member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab, said the photo shows a “very strong indication” of AI creation.

“You can see that the reflector on the vest is different, as is usually the case with generative AI, which has difficulty keeping the details consistent across images,” said Farid, whose research specializes in digital image analysis The Shipping fact check. “On the right you can see the result of a simple geometric analysis that I performed on this second image. The slatted floor at the bottom of the boat does not correspond geometrically with the expected perspective geometry of a natural image.”

RedState Author Buzz Patterson shared a graphic but very similar image on millions of followers and called it “so sad.”

“This image is seared into my mind,” Amy Kremer, a member of the Republican National Committee, tweeted alongside the image on Thursday.

Gerry Callahan, a right-wing radio host and podcaster, also shared the AI ​​image on X on Thursday. “This would be the wallpaper on every 'journalist's' phone in New York and Washington if there was a Republican in the White House,” he wrote in the post.

Philip Anderson, a self-proclaimed “January 6th survivor” with more than 130,000 followers

Hive Moderation, an AI image detector from AI company Hive, found that the viral image “likely contains AI-generated or deepfake content” and gave it a score of 99.5 percent. “The score … is our confidence score that the image is AI-generated,” said Kevin Guo, CEO and co-founder of Hive The Shipping fact check.

TrueMedia.org, another tool that analyzes social media images for AI-generated sources, found that the viral image contained “significant evidence of manipulation.”

Olga Robinson, deputy editor at the BBC who reports on disinformation, noted visual inconsistencies visible in both AI-generated photos.

In the first photo, Robinson noted an “unnatural shine and strange details like the black spot on the hand.” For the second image, “telltale signs include the unnatural glow, a disappearing green boat and a man with what appears to be a missing limb in the background,” she said in a separate post on X.

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