Los Angeles is grappling with devastating wildfires that have already consumed more than 35,000 acres, marking one of the most destructive fire outbreaks in California’s history. The Palisades Fire’s largest blaze has torched roughly 16,000 acres and remains mostly uncontained, leaving residents and authorities in a race against time.
Amid this crisis, a video showing various scenes of fires—including mountains ablaze and a city engulfed in flames—is being widely shared on social media with claims that it depicts real footage of the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, California.
Claim:
An X user shared the video and wrote, “America, the world’s most superpower country, is completely helpless in front of Allah. The destruction caused by the fire in Los Angeles shows that no one is more powerful than Allah.” (Archive)
Several X users have shared the video, making the same claim. (Click here, here, here and here to view the posts.)
Investigation:
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. We found that the video is AI-generated and does not represent real footage of the ongoing wildfires.
We searched for credible reports on the video but found none. However, we came across comments from users on viral posts stating that the video was generated using AI.
We found that the video was created by merging six clips showing fire engulfing various locations. We analysed the video by extracting keyframes and running them through the AI detector “Is it AI?”
The first keyframe shows a road lined with palm trees leading toward a burning mountain, while the second depicts cars stopped at a traffic light under a fiery sky. The third presents an aerial view of a city engulfed in flames and smoke at night, followed by the fourth, which shows widespread fires consuming buildings and roads. The fifth frame captures a hillside in flames, viewed from a street lined with cars at dusk, contrasting dramatically with the dark sky. The final keyframe portrays a city consumed by flames under a vivid orange sky. All these visuals were detected to be AI-generated. (Check the analysis here, here, here, here, here and here.)
Another detector, “Wasit AI,” found that, except for the last keyframe, the other five were AI-generated.
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On running the video through Hive Moderation, the results showed that it is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content, with an aggregate score of 99.8%.
Hence, we conclude that the viral video is AI-generated.
Conclusion: A video showing various scenes of fires being widely shared on social media with claims that it depicts real footage of the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, California is fake. The viral video is AI-generated.
(The fact-check article was originally published by Newsmeter and has been republished by Lighthouse Journalism as a part of Shakti Collective.)
