Stand up for the facts!

Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
We need your help.

More Info

I would like to contribute

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu
By Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu January 16, 2025

This video of LA fires is mostly AI-generated

If Your Time is short

  • Three of the video’s scenes are AI-generated and can be traced to a TikTok AI video artist.

  • One scene was shared on Facebook months before the fires with a caption that said it showed Algerian soccer fans celebrating a team’s victory.

  • Only one scene from the viral video depicts the recent fires. It shows a local news channel interviewing people who rescued horses from the fire.

One video widely shared on social media claimed to show the Southern California wildfires that broke out Jan. 7 and have since killed at least 25 people..

"God have mercy #losangelecalifornia," the Jan. 11 Facebook video’s caption said in Spanish. English text on the video claimed it was of "a huge fire breaking (the) city."

The Facebook video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads and Instagram.)

But this video is not entirely authentic. The video’s first scene showing skyscrapers burning and plumes of smoke in the sky is digitally created. It does not bear a resemblance to downtown Los Angeles’ skyline, which has been largely unaffected by the fires. The third scene shows another angle — we traced it to a Jan. 10 TikTok video made by an account with username ‘@digital.n0mad.’ The profile described the user as an "unusual AI artist" and its posts as "Fake Video, AI Art."

The post’s second scene opened with people running, with traffic in one direction and many red lights in the distance. We found that video shared on Facebook in August 2024, about five months before the greater Los Angeles fires. The video’s caption said it showed soccer fans of Algeria’s Mouloudia Club d'Alger celebrating their team’s victory.

Sign up for PolitiFact texts

The nine-second video’s fourth scene depicts authentic Los Angeles footage recorded by a KCOP-TV news crew during the recent fires. It shows residents rescuing horses from flames in the Eaton Fire in Altadena, a historically Black town in Los Angeles County. 

Featured Fact-check

The final scene showing a residential complex burning is also an artificial intelligence-created video that has been circulating online for months. Online users previously shared it in fall 2024 and claimed it showed the fiery aftermath of a bombing in Bierut, Lebanon, by Israel. But CBS News fact-checkers debunked it in October as generated by artificial intelligence and also traced it to the @digital.n0mad account.

Our ruling

A viral video claims to show the ongoing fires that have ravaged parts of Los Angeles. But only one out of the five scenes in the video are of the greater Los Angeles fires. The rest of the scenes can be traced back to a self-described AI-artist’s TikTok account and to soccer fans celebrating in Algeria.

We rate this video’s claim Mostly False.

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

More by Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu

This video of LA fires is mostly AI-generated

Support independent fact-checking.
Become a member!

In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts.

Sign me up