Did a white home with a red roof survive a wildfire that leveled every other home in a Los Angeles neighborhood? No, that's not true: This aerial view does not show a real neighborhood impacted by the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles County. Google Lens image search results say the image was made with Google AI.
The image appeared in a post (archived here) on X on January 13, 2025. It was captioned:
Imagine not even being slightly suspicious?
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source X screenshot taken on Tue Jan 14 16:26:58 2025 UTC)
An image search with Google Lens (pictured below) shows that the image has been widely circulated online. Several tabs under the search are visible. One of them, "About this image," opens a new window (inset) that has the label, "Made with Google AI."
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Google Lens screenshots taken on Tue Jan 14 17:16:00 2025 UTC)
An August 29, 2023, article (archived here) in MIT Technology Review describes a digital watermarking tool called SynthID that is not visible to the human eye:
SynthID is created using two neural networks. One takes the original image and produces another image that looks almost identical to it, but with some pixels subtly modified. This creates an embedded pattern that is invisible to the human eye. The second neural network can spot the pattern and will tell users whether it detects a watermark, suspects the image has a watermark, or finds that it doesn't have a watermark. Kohli said SynthID is designed in a way that means the watermark can still be detected even if the image is screenshotted or edited--for example, by rotating or resizing it.
It should be noted this detection feature incorporated in the Google Lens image search was able to identify this image Generated by Google's AI. However, when tested by Lead Stories, it failed to identify that a fact checked image with a visible Grok watermark was AI generated.
This fake image of a home with a red roof unscathed by fire has caused some confusion due to being conflated with other situations.
'Miracle Home' in Maui
In 2023, after wind-driven wildfires swept through Maui, Hawaii, an oceanfront home in Lahaina, Maui, stood out dramatically in aerial photos. A CBS News video (archived here) captured the scene (pictured below):
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Tue Jan 14 18:32:42 2025 UTC)
The Maui home bears similarities to the home in the AI generated image, being white with a red roof, and surrounded by the rubble of other neighborhood homes. On August 24, 2023, NPR reported (archived here) on some of the changes the owners had made to the 100 year-old home: Many layers of asphalt roofing were replaced with corrugated metal, and the landscaping had also been redesigned, removing vegetation and adding gravel below the dripline of the roof.
KCAL news report from Lincoln Avenue and Royce Street
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jan 14 20:25:05 2025 UTC)
The red-roofed house and a house with religious statues in footage of a KCAL news report from Altadena, California, are not the same home -- one is an AI generated image and one is real. A Google instantstreetview.com image of the neighborhood at Lincoln Avenue and Royce Street in Altadena, as identified in the news chyron, does not resemble the neighborhood in the AI generated image: There is no house with a red roof and a horseshoe-shaped driveway. The AI generated block shows a straight, solid black line, suggesting a barrier like a fence or wall, dividing the back yards of the homes, which face two different streets. A reel posted on Facebook (archived here) on January 12, 2025, contains footage of a KCAL news report from Altadena, California. The post was captioned:
The interview of Mr. Jose Olvera, the sole house survivor from LA fire. They believed in God, statues of Mama Mary & Jesus outside their house, protected and shielded them from fire. #highlightseveryone #fbreelsfyp #viralvideo #everyonehighlights #palisades #PrayForLA #cttoOfvideonotmine
As the reporter was interviewing a resident, Jose Olvera, about what happened, she remarked on statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary outside the home and suggested it was possibly what had protected the house. The captioning added to the video reads:
His neighbors homes burned down and his house was untouched✝️✝️✝️
In another segment of the KCAL interview with Olvera, posted on YouTube (archived here) on January 9, 2025, he explains how he overcame a problem with low water pressure by first filling large trash bins with water, then using buckets of water drawn from the bins to fight the fires. In doing so he was able to also save the homes of several of his neighbors.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires are here.
