Hurricane Milton live updates: Florida begins recovery as millions still without power (original) (raw)

BBC Verify

AI-generated images and misleading videos of Hurricane Milton circulatepublished at 11:00 British Summer Time

By Emma Pengelly, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Olga Robinson

False videos of Hurricane Milton have been accumulating millions of views this week.

Yesterday, three images , externalclaiming to show flooding at Disney World in Florida began circulating far and wide on social media.

But the photos are not real and have been generated using AI.

False image of cinderella castleImage source, Social media

One of them,, external purporting to show flooding outside Cinderella’s Castle has been viewed more than 60,000 times on X. BBC Verify has seen foreign news websites reporting on the flooding as fact, despite the photos being fakes.

Another video viewed 241,000 times on X said to show the hurricane “destroying everything in its path” was created with CGI. It was posted by a YouTube channel which makes fictional tornado videos.

False image claiming to show hurricane using CGIImage source, Social media

Misleading footage was also being shared prior to Hurricane Milton making landfall.

On Monday an account on X reported, external what it called “breaking news”, saying Hurricane Milton was expected to cause “severe damage” to Florida, and posted a video of a moody, dark and foreboding sky over a beach.

Image of a video shared more than three years ago, in June 2021, by a local resident who had managed to capture the phenomenon of asperitas clouds on cameraImage source, Social media

It was filmed in Florida, but it was not the prelude to Hurricane Milton. In fact, the video was first shared more than three years ago, in June 2021, by a local resident who had managed to capture the phenomenon of asperitas clouds on camera; a rare cloud formation that can look like rippling waves.