An image shows the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles engulfed in flames.
This isn’t a real picture from the LA fires. Uncropped versions have a watermark in the right-hand corner that attributes the image to ‘Grok’—the Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot integrated with X (formerly Twitter), which creates images from prompts.
A picture of the iconic Hollywood sign on fire is being shared on social media amid the Los Angeles wildfires, but is not genuine.
The image, which has been circulating widely on Threads, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, appears to show the letters on Mount Lee, overlooking Hollywood in Los Angeles, engulfed in flames.
It comes as wildfires which are raging across Los Angeles have killed at least ten people, and destroyed thousands of buildings.
While the fires did extend onto the hills where the Hollywood sign is situated, causing fears for the landmark’s safety, at the time of writing, it had not caught fire.
In a 9 January post on Instagram, the Hollywood Sign Trust said: “The Hollywood Sign continues to stand tall! Please keep the rest of Los Angeles County in your thoughts, and stay alert if you have to travel around.”
The image that has been shared, although it looks convincing, has almost certainly been generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
An uncropped version, posted on X, includes the watermark for ‘Grok’ in the right-hand corner (although this doesn’t appear in versions posted on other social platforms).
Grok is the generative AI chatbot created by Elon Musk’s startup, xAI, which allows users to generate realistic images from text prompts and is integrated with X. We gave Grok the prompt “show me the Hollywood sign on fire”, which generated several similar images to the one being shared.
Full Fact has previously fact checked images that were shared as if they were genuine, but which were almost certainly AI creations by Grok—including a picture which appeared to show Bono and Bob Geldof holding Israeli flags, and one of ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad with Tucker Carlson in Moscow.
Before sharing images you see on social media, especially during crisis events, it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine. Our toolkits to identify misleading media, and AI-generated content, can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the image is almost certainly generated by AI, and is not a real image from the fires in Los Angeles.
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