This article is part of The Globe’s initiative to cover dis- and misinformation. E-mail us to share tips or feedback at disinfodesk@globeandmail.com.
Natural disasters can be a focal point for disinformation. Here are three examples that have emerged around Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida overnight Thursday.
Biden urging people to get vaccinated was shared with false context
A video was shared on X with the false context that President Joe Biden was speaking in 2024 about Hurricane Helene. The video is actually from August, 2021. Mr. Biden does urge people to be vaccinated against COVID-19 ahead of hurricane and wildfire season in the 2021 video, warning that evacuation centres could be places of transmission.
Mr. Biden’s August 2021 warnings about the Delta variant of COVID-19 align with modelling from June 2021 which predicted a surge of infections, and reporting in July 2021 that Delta had become the dominant strain and was responsible for a surge of deaths of unvaccinated people in the U.S.
Video of Hurricane Helene is AI-generated
AI-generated video of Hurricane Helene posted to TikTok on Sept. 27.TikTok
Dramatic video shared on TikTok of Helene making landfall is labelled as AI-generated in its caption, but that disclosure is not in the video itself, risking the video being shared or reposted without this context.
Examination of the video shows clues that confirm it is AI-generated. Apartment towers in the first shot have irregular shapes to their balconies. AI image and video generators are not good at representing areas of dense or repeated detail like this.
Another part of the video shows warping of a building when it is partly obscured by a palm tree. AI video generators are often unable to be consistent when something in the foreground obscures the background.
The video also has no natural sound of the storm, only music. Missing or inconsistent sound in a video can be a clue it is manipulated, had its context changed, or is AI generated.
AI-generated video of Hurricane Helene shared on Tiktok, slowed down to 25% normal speed and zoomed in, to highlight inconsistencies in the shape of balconies and warping of a building behind a palm tree.
TikTok
Yes, this is a real photo of a Coast Guard rescue
A striking photo of a man and a dog at sea during a Coast Guard rescue on Sept. 26 is real. The photo was posted to X by the U.S. Coast Guard’s official X account. Video of the rescue was posted on X by the official account of the U.S. Coast Guard Southeast, credited to a camera worn by a rescue swimmer. The photo and video were also posted to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, a hub where media gathered by America’s armed forces are shared.
The Coast Guard said the man and a dog were rescued from a disabled sailboat that was taking on water 25 miles (about 40 kilometres) off Sanibel Island, Fla. Both the man and his dog were taken to Southwest Florida International Airport to meet emergency medical services, the Coast Guard said both were in good health.