Images of animal rescue in Thai flooding likely AI-manipulatedpublished at 13:50 GMT
13:50 GMT
Marco Silva and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify
Images of a dog rescuing a cat from floods in southern Thailand have been shared widely across social media – including one X post that has been viewed almost two million times – but are likely to have been manipulated using artificial intelligence tools, an expert has told BBC Verify.
The pictures include a timestamp indicating they were taken in the southern Songkhla province on 22 November at around 20:00 local time.
But at this time of the year sunset is roughly two hours earlier in that region, making the time stamp implausible as the images appear to have been taken in daylight.
In the photo showing both animals already on the boat, the cat’s fur and hind legs also appear to merge with the dog’s right front paw – a type of anomaly commonly found in AI-generated images.
“The image of the animals on the boat shows signs of manipulation by generative AI,” says Dr Peter Bentley, a computer scientist at University College London.
He also pointed out inconsistencies in the lighting.
“The lighting on the cat’s head also is inconsistent with its placement under the towel suggesting that the cat photo may have been added afterwards and merged in with AI.”
Separately, we ran the image through Synth ID Detector, a AI detection tool developed by Google, which concluded with “very high confidence” that all three images were made with Google AI.
An estimated 1.9 million people are thought to have been affected by flooding in southern Thailand following days of heavy rain.