Does a photo making the rounds online and used on some news sites show the Delta Flight 4819 plane that crashed at Toronto Pearson International Airport? No, that's not true: According to an online detection tool the image was generated using AI. It also featured a Grok AI logo and several artifacts inconsistent with reality.
An example of the image appeared in a post on X (archived here) published on February 17, 2025. It was captioned:
TRUMP AIR DISASTER 8:
US flight 4819 of Delta Airlines crash lands UPSIDE DOWN in Toronto marking the 8th plane crash in 20 days since Trump/Musk fired FAA/ATC staff #planecrash
1/29-D.C.
1/31-Penn
2/5-D.C.
2/6-Alaska
2/10-Arizona
2/12-Calif
2/16-Georgia
2/17-Toronto
This is what the image looked like:
(Source: image downloaded from x.com on February 17, 2025, at 22:35:18 UTC)
AI detection tool Hive said it was 98.7 percent likely the image was generated using AI.
(Source: screenshot of Hive results taken on February 17, 2020 at 22:36:47 UTC)
It also had the logo of Grok AI in the lower right corner:
Several clues in the image also revealed it was generated using AI, for example the fact that most of the plane does not appear to be upside-down: except for the weird landing gear at the front the windows, wings, engine and tail appear to be in the normal position, contradicting news coverage of the crash (archived here) that said the plane had overturned.
That didn't stop sites like El Heraldo De Mexico (archived here), Plano Informativo (archived here) and La Patilla (archived here) from using the image in their news coverage:
(Image: collage of screenshots taken by Lead Stories on February 17, 2025)
