A photo shows a blue-roofed house untouched by the wildfires in Los Angeles.
This isn’t a real picture. The watermark in the bottom right corner shows it is almost certainly an image generated by Grok—the generative AI chatbot created by Elon Musk’s startup, xAI, which allows users to generate realistic images from text prompts on X (formerly Twitter).
An image of a blue-roofed house left largely unscathed amid the wildfires in Los Angeles has almost certainly been generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Fires have devastated large areas of Los Angeles in January, killing at least 28 people and destroying over 15,000 structures—with several fires in the city continuing to burn. A new fire also broke out in Los Angeles County, about 45 miles away from the city, on 22 January.
But the image circulating on social media does not show a real scene from the fires.
One post has been shared more than 2,800 times on Facebook, with the caption: “The blue roof houses and the houses without a smart meter are still standing in California.”
While the house looks realistic at first glance, a ‘Grok’ watermark in the bottom right corner is a key clue that it was actually generated by AI.
Grok is the name of 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 (formerly Twitter).
There are also some errors in how the roof is depicted, with overlapping roof lines and multiple gables that appear out of proportion.
Full Fact has previously fact checked images that were shared as if they were genuine, but which were almost certainly AI creations using Grok—including an image that depicted the Hollywood sign ablaze.
The reference to the blue roof in the caption may refer to a theory being shared online that blue items were unaffected by the LA fires (which was also shared in relation to the 2023 Maui wildfires). This has also been debunked by other fact checkers.
Investigations are underway to discover the cause of the LA fires, including looking into an electrical transmission tower in Eaton Canyon, but there is currently no evidence that smart meters in homes were the source.
Before sharing images that you see on social media it’s important, especially during crisis events, to consider whether what you are seeing online is accurate and comes from a reliable source. 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 it isn’t a real image from the Los Angeles fires, and is almost certainly AI-generated.
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