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This video of LA fires is mostly AI-generated
If Your Time is short
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Three of the video’s scenes are AI-generated and can be traced to a TikTok AI video artist.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
Our Sources
Facebook video (archived link), Jan. 11, 2025
Facebook video (archived link), Aug. 8, 2024
Facebook video (archived link), Oct. 1, 2024
TikTok video (archived link), Jan. 10, 2025
TikTok, @digital.n0mad, accessed Jan. 16, 2025
KCOP-TV Los Angeles, Horses rescued from massive California fires, Jan. 8, 2025
CBS News, AI-generated video purportedly showing fiery aftermath of Israeli airstrike in Beirut goes viral, Oct. 7, 2024
The Guardian, LA fires forecast to be costliest blaze in US history with estimate of over $200bn in losses, Dec. 13, 2025
Los Angeles Times, The destruction of Altadena reverberates across Black Los Angeles, Jan. 16, 2025
Los Angeles Times, Why is L.A.’s iconic skyline far from the beach — unlike Miami, Seattle and other cities? Jan. 26, 2022
Univision, Esa imagen viral de edificios ardiendo NO muestra los incendios de Los Ángeles: fue creada con IA, Jan. 14, 2025
The New York Times, Shattered in the Fire: A Historic Black Haven, Jan. 14, 2025
The Associated Press, The California wildfires could be leaving deeper inequality in their wake, Jan. 12, 2025
CBS News, Southern California's winds weakening; at least 25 dead, 26 missing amid wildfires, Jan. 16, 2025
NBC News, What we know about the victims killed in the California wildfires, Jan. 16, 2025
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This video of LA fires is mostly AI-generated
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