![\"Tweets](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/matt-wallace-ai-side-by-side.jpg\")
Tweets from X user and conspiracy theorist Matt Wallace on Feb. 10, 2026. Images: X <\/p>\nNancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of \u201cToday\u201d host Savannah Guthrie, went missing Jan. 31 from her Arizona home in a disappearance case that\u2019s captured significant national attention. Folks at the FBI say they don\u2019t have any suspects in her potential abduction, but video and still images from a Nest surveillance camera released on Tuesday show a masked figure at Guthrie\u2019s door that morning.<\/p>\n
The new images have led to something that happens in virtually every high profile criminal case these days: Social media users are running the images through generative artificial intelligence tools like xAI\u2019s Grok, trying to get a proper looking picture of the suspect without his mask. But that\u2019s just not how AI works.<\/p>\n
Better than nothing? <\/p>\n
Matt Wallace, a popular distributor of misinformation on X ever since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022, tweeted Tuesday, \u201cHey @grok remove the kidnapper\u2019s mask and show us what he looks like.\u201d <\/p>\n
Wallace shared what Grok generated with the caption, \u201cThis is what I got! Better than nothing,\u201d as you can see in the screenshots below.<\/p>\n
Tweets from X user and conspiracy theorist Matt Wallace on Feb. 10, 2026. Images: X <\/p>\n
The resulting image is quite literally nothing of value.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just a random image of a human face that was created by Grok. It has no relation to reality and it is arguably worse than nothing because it will inevitably spread on X as a possible guide for internet sleuths. That\u2019s precisely what happened in the case of the suspect in the Charlie Kirk shooting.<\/p>\n
AI sleuthing is common now <\/p>\n
After Kirk was killed last year, conspiracy theorists like MAGA influencer Laura Loomer ran security camera images through Grok in an attempt to get a clearer picture of the suspect. But as we explained at the time<\/a>, AI can\u2019t actually provide more visual information than what\u2019s there. And images shared by Loomer were later used by internet users to cast doubt on the correct identity of the suspect who was eventually arrested in the case, Tyler Robinson.<\/p>\n After all, the AI-enhanced images didn\u2019t look like Robinson because the AI wasn\u2019t providing anything useful. It was simply adding information that wasn\u2019t there, effectively creating a new person\u2019s face which wasn\u2019t grounded in reality. Other conspiracy theorists took the image and compared it to Robinson, insisting there was some grand conspiracy<\/a> afoot.<\/p>\n The Nancy Guthrie case is sparking an identical rush by social media users to run these new security camera images through AI. And they\u2019re going to be similarly disappointed in the results, assuming we ever see a suspect arrested. The case has been running up against all kind of obstacles and a lack of information, based on the latest reports from mainstream news outlets.<\/p>\n Nancy Guthrie was last seen around 9:45 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31 after having dinner with local family and was reported missing by her family the following day after she didn\u2019t show up for church<\/a>. The Guthrie family has received ransom demands that include paying in Bitcoin, according to ABC News<\/a>, but it\u2019s not at all clear how credible those might be.<\/p>\n One man from Hawthorne, California, identified as 42-year-old Derrick Callella<\/a>, was arrested after allegedly demanding a ransom despite not kidnapping anybody. And while it seems like Guthrie may have been abducted for ransom, nobody can say that definitively yet.<\/p>\n Kath Patel is crowdsourcing his case <\/p>\n The footage released by the FBI was recorded during the morning of Jan. 31, according to a tweet from FBI Director Kash Patel<\/a>, and was \u201crecovered from residual data located in backend systems.\u201d <\/p>\n Several news outlets have reported that Guthrie \u201cdidn\u2019t have a subscription\u201d to Nest, but it\u2019s not at all clear what Patel means by \u201cbackend systems.\u201d CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper said on-air Tuesday night that it was recovered from \u201cremote servers.\u201d<\/p>\n The FBI\u2019s release of the Nest footage is widely seen as a form of desperation. But obviously the public doesn\u2019t know what may or may not be gathered behind the scenes. And there\u2019s presumably other security cameras in the area that could be checked for evidence, especially as companies like Ring normalize the kind of mass surveillance<\/a> that we now live under.<\/p>\n Plenty of idiots around <\/p>\n Matthew Wallace isn\u2019t the only person currently trying to run the security camera footage from the Guthrie case through AI. All you need to do is check Patel\u2019s replies on X to see people who are asking Grok for \u201cenhanced\u201d and colorized versions<\/a> of the images, as well as close ups that are supposed to reveal something new.<\/p>\n One user was indignant at the FBI, writing, \u201cthis entire video can be colorized. why hasn\u2019t this been done?\u201d<\/p>\n Some users have also added various flourishes to make the suspect look like their preferred villain, whether they\u2019re Hispanic or Palestinian or any other number of characteristics that may be shared by the \u201creal\u201d criminals in the U.S., depending on your bigotries.<\/p>\n \u201c@grok can you put a keffiyeh on the photos head?\u201d one user wrote Tuesday before Grok dutifully complied<\/a>.<\/p>\n These are perhaps the dumbest people on the planet. And not just the bigots.<\/p>\n These people have no idea how AI works when it comes to visual information. It\u2019s not some magic tool that can provide you with more information than is currently available. AI is just making things up and guessing. The images it\u2019s creating right now in Patel\u2019s replies are a huge waste of time and resources. But X has become a cesspool of idiots and Nazi freaks, so you\u2019re going to see a lot of that right now.<\/p>\n Fox News is just as dumb <\/p>\n At the same time, it\u2019s tough to be too hard on amateur social media sleuths. Because Fox News seems to be just as pathetic in its discussion of the case. Jesse Watters, a Fox host who was famously uninvited to Thanksgiving<\/a> by his own mother for being a political extremist, rambled on and on Tuesday with his expert analysis.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you look at him and he doesn\u2019t look like a professional. He looks relaxed, but not very determined. He looks like he\u2019s moving very slowly. Maybe he\u2019s familiar with the house, but it doesn\u2019t look like this guy\u2019s done this before,\u201d Watters said on TV Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n Watters went on to say that he seems \u201chaphazard\u201d and \u201clooks kind of maybe like a local, not some guy that flew in and had targeted Nancy Guthrie from out of town.\u201d To be clear, Watters has no expertise to offer in this case, but that didn\u2019t stop him from wildly speculating for several minutes.<\/p>\n Yes, social media has turned everyone into experts. But when mainstream TV channels are filled with people who are just as stupid, you just have to accept that this is the world we live in now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of \u201cToday\u201d host Savannah Guthrie, went missing Jan. 31 from her Arizona home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,7710,44452,154270,111,139,69,12739,145,5537],"class_list":{"0":"post-278202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-grok","12":"tag-kash-patel","13":"tag-nancy-guthrie","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-savannah-guthrie","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fake](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fake-AI-guthrie-grok.jpg\")
Fake images created with Grok purporting to show a suspect in the Nancy Guthrie disappearance case. Images: X <\/p>\n