Fake image of plane circulates after Washington tragedy
"Emerging now. NO survivors in the Washington plane crash, according to DC's fire chief. Rescue efforts have now shifted to a recovery operation. #planecrash," says a January 30 post sharing the image on X.
Similar posts in English and Spanish spread the image across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The picture circulated while a rescue mission for those aboard American Eagle Flight 5342 turned quickly into a recovery mission, with authorities saying there were no survivors among the 64 people on the plane and three soldiers on the helicopter. The accident -- the first major US crash since 2009 -- occurred as the commercial airliner approached Reagan National Airport for a routine late-evening landing after a flight from Wichita, Kansas.
The picture circulating online is not authentic.
It shows a jet that is largely intact, but officials said the plane involved in Washington collision split into three pieces.
Photos released by the US Coast Guard captured the wreckage in the Potomac River on January 30.
The salvage crews pulled part of the plane out from the river using a crane on February 3.
The aircraft that crashed was a Bombardier CRJ-700, according to American Airlines (archived here).
Photos of such planes -- which according to a brochure for the jet series can seat up to 78 passengers -- show longer fuselages and narrower noses than in the fake image spreading online, plus rear-mounted engines (archived here and here).
Walter Scheirer, a professor of engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told AFP in a February 3 email that he believes the fake circulating online "is a poorly rendered image that is likely the product of a generative AI algorithm" (archived here). He said the image contains numerous irregularities typical of AI creations, including an "asymmetrical and malformed cockpit and truck windows in the scene."
The trucks in the background also appear to be floating cleanly atop the river, and the plane is depicted as having crashed far closer to the shore than the Coast Guard's photos show was the case, Scheirer said.
Siwei Lyu, director of the University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, also analyzed the image using detection algorithms and agreed it was likely created by AI (archived here).
"The reflection of the blue lights that have no correspondence in the image is one strong telltale sign," Lyu told AFP in a February 3 email.
He added that the figures in the background are misshapen and disproportionate, with unrealistic head-to-body ratios.
AFP also observed that the workers in the viral image do not appear to scale relative to the plane. One figure on the plane has a malformed arm.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the collision here and here.
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