Earlier today, a photo, which has since been deemed fake, of an explosion near the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., began circulating social media. As a result, the stock market saw a brief dip when the fake news began to spread.
While the image and false report were worrisome enough, what’s even more concerning is that they are believed to have been created using artificial intelligence tools.
The image, which shows a massive plume of black smoke near a building, was shared on Twitter Monday, with a caption claiming there was an explosion near the Pentagon.
“Large explosion near the Pentagon complex in Washington DC. – initial report,” the tweet said.
The Arlington Police Department was quick to respond to the claims, sharing on Twitter that the image and report were both fake.
“There is NO explosion or incident taking place at or near the Pentagon reservation, and there is no immediate danger or hazards to the public,” the Arlington PD tweeted.
The photo was shared by a verified account on Twitter, with the handle @Bloombergfeed. Since its posting, several media outlets shared that it appeared to be generated by AI software. However, this has not yet been confirmed.
“This image shows typical signs of being AI-synthesized: there are structural mistakes on the building and fence that you would not see if, for example, someone added smoke to an existing photo,” Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a digital forensic expert told CNN.
One of the accounts that shared the photo was RT, a Russian state-media Twitter account with more than 3 million followers.
Since being posted this morning, the photo has been taken down, but the impact was still felt fairly quickly.
By 10:10 a.m. this morning, the market had fallen by 0.26%. However, it bounced back fairly quickly, Insider reported.
The account that posted the photo has since been suspended by Twitter, but it remains unclear as to who was operating it or where they got the image.
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