Dramatic 'Hurricane Milton' video predates storm by weeks, likely AI-generated
- Published on October 22, 2024 at 08:11
- 3 min read
- By Hailey JO, AFP South Korea
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"This wasn't from a movie #florida #hurricane," read a Korean-language Facebook post that shared the image on October 16, 2024.
The image shows a giant tornado looming over a town, with superimposed text that reads "07 October, 2024", along with a TikTok handle.
The picture ricocheted across Instagram, South Korean forum Arca.live and YouTube in various languages, including English, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi and Tagalog.
The posts spread as Floridians braced for the arrival of Hurricane Milton, which made landfall on October 9 as a Category 3 storm (archived link).
At least 16 people were killed when the storm barrelled through the state, knocking out power for millions of residents and causing an estimated $50 billion in damage.
Some social media users appeared to believe the video genuinely showed Milton.
"Wow, it's scarier than CGI," one commented.
"It's crazier than the movie The Day After Tomorrow," another wrote.
The images shared online, however, circulated several weeks before the formation of Milton in the Gulf of Mexico.
Signs of AI
A reverse image search on Google led to a YouTube video posted by an account called "DesasterStorm" on August 22 -- nearly seven weeks before Milton made landfall in Florida (archived link).
This user also shared the clip on TikTok, where it racked up more than eight million views (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the falsely shared image on Facebook (left) and the YouTube video (right):
Shu Hu, head of Purdue University's Purdue Machine Learning and Media Forensics Lab in the United States, told AFP in an October 21 email that he believed the video did not depict a real event (archived link).
He noted that while the centre of the storm is moving, the surrounding area remains stationary.
Siwei Lyu, director of the University of Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, said the clip was "likely to have been created in part using AI" (archived link).
"The buildings look irregular with non-parallel profiles," he said in an October 22 email. "These are typical artefacts of current AI-based image/video generation tools."
The video includes visual inconsistencies, such as distorted building shapes, indistinct windows and an overall blurry texture.
Many TikTok users commented that the video appeared to be AI-generated, although the post itself does not contain a disclaimer.
AFP could not find any results matching the image from media outlets covering Hurricane Milton, nor any images matching the landscape of brown-coloured buildings.
AFP has debunked more misinformation about Hurricane Milton here.
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