AI Image Viral as Real Photo of Plane at Ukrainian Airbase Destroyed by Russia

Multiple tools showed high confidence that this image is an AI-generated one.

A photo showing a massive fire around an aircraft has gone viral on social media, where users have claimed that it shows visuals from a Ukrainian airbase that was destroyed by Russian forces during retaliatory action.

(Archived versions of more posts sharing this image can be seen here, here, and here.)

But...?: The image was made using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and does not show a real photo.

How did we find out the truth?: We ran a reverse image search on the photo, but saw that it had not been shared by any official source.

• Since there were no credible accounts or websites sharing this image, we ran it through AI-generated content detectors like Hive Moderation and SightEngine.

• Hive Moderation's tool said that there was a 99.4 percent likelihood of the image being AI-generated.

• Similarly, Sight Engine, too, gave a 99 percent confidence score of the image being an AI-generated one.

Both tools also noted that the image was created using OpenAI's GPT-4o.

Conclusion: An AI-generated image has gone viral with the false claim that it shows a Ukrainian airbase which was destroyed in retaliatory attacks by Russian forces.

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