Experts Alarmed as AI Image of Hurricane Melissa Featuring Birds “Larger Than Football Fields” Goes Viral

The Caribbean just suffered one of the largest Hurricanes in recorded history. The scale of Melissa — which bombarded Jamaica, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic with sustained winds of 185 mph — is unprecedented, which is makes it all the more bizarre to see fake AI-generated images of the storm go viral.

While sharing doctored images in the aftermath of a disaster is a decade-long tradition at this point, Yale’s Climate Connections blog notes that generative AI is now making crisis misinformation worse than it’s ever been.

One of the most flagrant pieces of disinfo surrounding Hurricane Melissa is an AI generated picture purporting to show the system from miles above the ground. The image shows an absolutely mammoth hurricane eye, punctuated by a flock of birds circling safely above.

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