AI-generated images misrepresented as real photos after Afghanistan quake

"Update: Nine people died in a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in southeastern Afghanistan," reads a Thai-language Facebook post published on September 1, 2025.

It shares an image showing buildings surrounded by rubble at night, with several people standing outside.

A similar visual has spread elsewhere on Facebook with superimposed Thai-language text that reads: "September 1: Devastating magnitude 6 earthquake in Afghanistan. Over 250 dead and more than 500 injured."

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Screenshots of the false Facebook posts, taken on September 8, 2025, with red Xs added by AFP

The posts circulated after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan on August 31, killing over 2,200 people and making it the deadliest in decades to hit the country (archived link).

They also spread in other posts alongside false claims in English, Hindi and Malay that they showed the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Afghanistan.

But a reverse image search on Google found the images are labelled as "Made with Google AI" in its "About this image" feature.

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Screenshots from Google Images, with the AI labels highlighted by AFP

A Google spokesperson had previously told AFP that when a SynthID watermark is detected, it means that "the image has been generated or modified with AI".

SynthID, launched by Google's DeepMind AI lab in 2023, identifies images generated with Google AI (archived here and here).

An analysis of the images also found visual errors indicative of AI.

In the first image, the shadows appear to cast toward a source of light instead of away from it. In the second image, the rubble appears to be composed of a different material than the destroyed house.  

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Screenshots highlighting the visual errors in the images

Other outlets, including BBC Verify and Deutsche Welle, have also identified the images as made with AI (archived here and here).

AFP debunked misinformation related to the earthquake in Afghanistan here.