Australia police refute authenticity of missing boy image

"A potential breakthrough! An eyewitness reports seeing a boy matching Gus Lamont's description with an unfamiliar man in a car about 100km (62 miles) from Yunta," reads an Instagram post shared on October 8, 2025, referring to the South Australian outback town.

The post also shares a collage consisting of three images, one of which shows a man carrying a curly-haired child next to a car. The child was circled in red with the words "Is this a kidnapping case?" overlaid on the image.

"Celebrity Today", a US-based social media page with 200,000 followers that appears to post manipulated images, first shared the post on October 7.  

"This crucial lead has refueled hope and reopened critical lines of inquiry," it says, before urging users to "share this update".

The claim has also spread on Facebook and X.

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Screenshot of the false Instagram post taken on October 10, 2025, with the orange X added by AFP

Gus was last seen by his grandmother in the afternoon of September 27 at his family's homestead playing on a mound of dirt before he went missing, according to the police (archived link). 

After a week of intense searching, police announced that they had scaled it back since October 3 following medical experts' advice that there was little hope of finding Gus alive (archived link). 

While the picture of the boy at the bottom of the collage is a genuine photo of Gus provided by the family and the one of the men standing came from local news reports, South Australia Police confirmed the image of the man carrying a child was fabricated, saying it was "not factual" (archived here and here). 

"Police urge caution when accessing artificial intelligence in internet searches and recommend cross-referencing the information with trusted sources," a police spokesperson said by email on October 10.

The image shared also contains clear visual discrepancies that are consistent with AI-generated content -- such as the warped fingers of the man holding the boy and the floating, ghost-like tree in the background. 

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Screenshot of false post with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP in yellow

The annotations on the image and combination of several images are a counter-forensic technique to try to bypass detection tools. 

South Australia Police told AFP that when it comes to looking for "accurate information on missing persons, police investigations or emergency events, the public should go to official websites or social media pages for reliable and accurate information". 

The latest update from the police was on October 7, saying that while search efforts had been scaled back, the investigation is now being managed by the Missing Persons Section for long-term cases. 

"We will never give up hope of finding Gus. There are further lines of enquiry being undertaken and the family have continued to cooperate with fully with police," said Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams in the statement (archived link). 

The Australian Associated Press has also fact-checked the image and other misinformation surrounding Gus Lamont's disappearance (archived link).