Images of 'exhausted South Korean firefighters' bear signs of AI generation

Published on April 7, 2025 at 10:57
3 min read
By Hailey JO, AFP South Korea

As South Korea grappled with multiple wildfires in March 2025, images were shared in social media posts that falsely claimed they showed firefighters exhausted from containing the blazes. The images are inconsistent with photos taken of firefighters during the unprecedented wildfires in the country’s southeast, and contain visual artefacts that an expert told AFP are signs of AI generation.

"They are truly, truly admirable," reads the Korean-language caption of an image shared on Threads on March 27, 2025.

It shows a group of firemen -- some sitting on the ground, others standing in the rain -- looking completely exhausted, with part of a fire engine visible behind them.

In a separate post the following day, the Threads user shared another image of a firefighter -- his face smudged with soot and an inferno blazing in the background -- with the caption: "This single photo says it all. They are working incredibly hard... Please do your best until the very end."

The pictures circulated as more than a dozen fires scorched wide swathes of South Korea's southeast and forced around 37,000 people to flee (archived link). Thirty-one people have been killed in the fires, the country's largest and deadliest on record, as of April 4 (archived link).

Screenshots of the false Threads posts, captured on April 4, 2025

The images were also included in similar posts elsewhere on Threads, X, Instagram and Facebook, and the image was featured in a media report with credit given to an unnamed reader.

The pictures, however, are inconsistent with photos of firefighters taken during the wildfires.

Visual anomalies

The firefighters' clothing and the fire engine in the circulating images differ from how they appear in photos taken by AFP photojournalists Anthony Wallace and Yasuyoshi Chiba amid efforts to contain the deadly wildfires.

Comparison of the falsely shared image (top left) and AFP photos, with visual discrepancies highlighted by AFP

"Both images have clear visual artefacts as AI-generated," Siwei Lyu, director of the University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, told AFP in an April 4 email (archived link).

Lyu said figures and objects in the first image, including the firefighters' clothing and the fire engine, are misshapen and "lack realistic details".

In the second image, there is an "extra hand near the glove".