Does an authentic photo show firefighters standing on a plane floating in a river while surrounded by boats and cars after a January 2025 plane crash in Washington? No, that's not true: A specialized detection tool showed the image was generated using artificial intelligence. Several details in the image, like cars sitting on top of the water and missing engines on the plane, also pointed towards an AI origin.
The image appeared in a a post on X (archived here) published by an account named @254Debug on January 30, 2025, with a caption that read:
Emerging now🚨🚨
NO survivors in the Washington plane crash, according to DC's fire chief. Rescue efforts have now shifted to a recovery operation.🥹💔
#planecrash
This is what the post looked like at the time:
(Source: screenshot of a post on x.com taken by Lead Stories on January 30, 2025 at 16:53:02 UTC)
AI detection tool Hive said it was 99.8 percent likely the image was generated using AI.
Several clues in the image also revealed it was not authentic. For example, there are several cars or vans that appear to be parked on the surface of the water in the background.
Furthermore, the plane in the image does not correspond to the type of plane that was involved in the crash of Flight 5342, which was a Bombardier CRJ 700. That type of plane has distinctive engines mounted near the tail and a pointy nose, as can be seen in the photo below of a plane of that type:
(Source: By Mark Harkin, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31887913)
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning the Flight 5342 plane and helicopter crash can be found here.
