AI image, unrelated building collapse photo falsely linked to deadly Philippine tremor
- Published on June 12, 2026 at 06:30
- 3 min read
- By Ara EUGENIO, AFP Philippines
After a powerful earthquake hit the southern Philippines in June 2026, two images were shared in posts claiming they showed an unfinished building flattened by the quake and construction workers at the site who died. Authorities told AFP that no such incident involving a large group of construction workers had occurred in the recent tremor. The image of the workers is in fact AI-generated, and the photo of the collapsed building was taken two weeks before the quake in the country’s north.
"Lord have mercy on the construction workers of Gensan City who perished in the earthquake," says part of a Visayan-language Facebook post shared on June 8, 2026, using the local shorthand for General Santos, a city in southern Philippines.
"My deepest sympathy to the entire family of our fellow countrymen. Let's all stay safe, everyone.
The post features two images. The first image appears to show the construction workers with their faces obscured and superimposed text reading "RIP", and the other shows an aerial view of a collapsed building structure.
The images were also shared in similar posts after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Philippines' southern Mindanao island on the morning of June 8, bringing down buildings, triggering landslides and setting off tsunami warnings across the region (archived link).
The tremor left at least 55 people dead, according to a government tally released on June 12, as rain and aftershocks hampered rescue efforts (archived link).
The offshore quake hit south of General Santos, a city of about 720,000 on Mindanao island, with social media videos verified by AFP showing some building collapsing.
But the circulating images show neither casualties from the recent quake nor a building that collapsed in the June 8 tremor.
The region's civil defence chief Rodrigo Sosmena told AFP the circulating claims were not true: "Nothing like that happened here in Gensan."
Sosmena said the worst-hit area in the city was a local supermarket, where rescuers were still deployed to recover victims trapped by the earthquake.
"But there's no such high casualty incident involving construction workers," he said on June 10.
AI image
An analysis of the first image shows it has a watermark reading "Headlines PH".
A subsequent keyword search on Facebook led to a June 2 post by a page of the same name, which featured a clearer version of the image of the construction workers with their faces uncovered.
While the post does not contain an AI disclaimer, the image bears signs of digital manipulation.
Nearly every individual in the picture shares similar facial features, one person appears to have distorted fingers, and two of the signboards in the background contain incoherent words and are unreadable.
AFP ran the falsely shared image through OpenAI's image verification tool, which found it had been generated using its tools (archived link).
Construction site collapse
A reverse image search on Google found the second falsely shared image was one of several photos uploaded on Facebook on May 27 by the Angeles City Information Office (archived link).
The photos in the post show rescue efforts following the collapse of an unfinished building in Angeles City, which is around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Manila.
AFP reported that the nine-storey building collapsed in the early hours of May 24, damaging an adjacent hotel and leaving behind a giant pile of twisted steel beams, power pylons and slabs of concrete (archived link).
Regulators had been monitoring the project after inspectors briefly shut it down in 2024 over occupational safety violations.
Local disaster officials put the death toll at 30 on June 9, as recovery operations continued more than two weeks after the collapse (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation related to the Philippines' June 8 quake.
Copyright © AFP 2017-2026. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
