Do images shared on Facebook genuinely show what appears to be a UFO in the "remote desert of Egypt"? No, that's not true: Hive Moderation, an online tool used to detect AI-generated images, confirmed that it was 99.6 percent likely the images were created using AI. They were first published to a Reddit thread about content generated using the AI program Midjourney.
A version of the claim appeared in a post on Facebook on August 6, 2024 (archived here), with a caption that read:
Incredible Discovery Unearthed in the Remote Desert of Egypt
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#Pyramids #AncientEgypt #EngineeringMarvels #HumanIngenuity #Archaeology #AncientHistory #GizaPyramids #ConstructionTechniques #Egyptology #HistoricalAchievements
Here is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Wed Aug 15 08:45:00 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search (archived here) showed that the images were previously shared (archived here) to Reddit in January 2024 on a subreddit feed (archived here) dedicated to Midjourney (archived here), software for AI-generated content. Here is how that post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Reddit screenshot taken Wed Aug 14 16:46:04 2024 UTC)
In the comments section of the post on Reddit, the original poster wrote:
... the prompt was historical archeological photo of a giant alien spaceship half buried in a deep excavation in the desert near a temple ruin, sepia photo is aged and cracked, a man with a shovel stands in the hole at the bottom of a ladder to show the enormous scale --ar 4:3 --v 6.
A screenshot of that comment is shown below:
(Source: Reddit screenshot taken Wed Aug 14 16:55:53 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories also ran the images through the AI-detection tool, Hive Moderation. The images were assessed as being 99.6 percent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content," and 98 percent likely to have been generated using Midjourney:
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken Wed Aug 14 16:32:52 2024 UTC)
The Facebook page that shared the post did not include any disclaimer that the image was created using AI, nor did it credit the images' original poster.
Included in the post's comment section was a link to an article (archived here) that contained no further information about the supposed "astonishing" discovery, nor did the story directly address the images.
Lead Stories has debunked other content created using AI programming, those stores are here.
