After Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across parts of six southeastern U.S. states last week, images of the multistate catastrophe—and the rescue and recovery operations that have followed—rapidly spread across the internet.
However, the widespread availability and access to digital photo creation—using AI technology to create images—has called the authenticity of some viral images into question.
Two viral photos—both featuring a worried-looking young girl wearing a life jacket and holding a puppy aboard a rescue boat—are made with 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 figure Juanita Broaddrick. “We have to help these victims,” she wrote alongside the image. “Comrad Kamala and Sleepy Joe have deserted them.”
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley and member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab, said the photo showed a “very strong indication” of AI-generation.
“You can see that the reflector on the vest is different as typically happens with generative AI, which struggles to keep details consistent across images,” Farid, whose research specializes in digital image analysis, told The Dispatch Fact Check. “Shown on the right is the result of a simple geometric analysis that I performed on this second image. The slatted floor on the bottom of the boat is geometrically inconsistent with the expected perspective geometry of a natural image.”
RedState writer Buzz Patterson shared a distinct yet very similar image on X on Wednesday, adding, “Our government has failed us again.” The next day, right-wing activist Laura Loomer reshared Patterson’s tweet and image with her 1.3 million followers, calling it “so sad.”
“This picture has been seared into my mind,” Amy Kremer, a member of the Republican National Committee, tweeted on Thursday alongside the image.
Gerry Callahan, a right-wing radio host and podcaster, also shared the AI image on X on Thursday. “This would be the wallpaper on the phone of every ‘journalist’ in New York and Washington if there were a Republican in the White House,” he wrote in the post.
Philip Anderson, a self-described “January 6th survivor” with more than 130,000 followers on X, also tweeted out the image on Thursday, claiming the girl in the AI-generated photo “lost her family in the North Carolina hurricane.”
Hive Moderation, an AI image detector offered by the AI company Hive, determined that the viral image is “likely to contain 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,” Hive CEO and co-founder Kevin Guo told The Dispatch Fact Check.
TrueMedia.org, another tool that analyzes images on social media for AI-generated sourcing, found that the viral image carried “substantial evidence of manipulation.”
Olga Robinson, an assistant editor at the BBC who covers disinformation, noted visual inconsistencies visible in both AI-generated photos.
In the first photo, Robinson identified an “unnatural sheen and weird details like the black patch on the hand.” For the second image, “Tell tale signs include the unnatural sheen, a disappearing green boat and a man with a seemingly missing limb in the background,” she said in a separate post on X.
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