Video of homeless man on LA overpass pillar is AI-generated
A video claiming to show a homeless person living atop a pillar of an overpass in Los Angeles has gone viral on the social media platform Facebook. However, Dismislab’s fact-check has found that the video was created using artificial intelligence (AI).
On August 25, a video was posted from the Facebook page “Times Today World” with the caption, “A homeless person is living atop the pillar of an overpass in Los Angeles.” The video shows a person wearing a black hoodie living atop a round concrete pillar beneath a multi-story flyover; clothes can be seen hanging to dry on a rope tied to the pillar, a television set placed there, various bags and containers kept nearby, and a ladder leaning against it for climbing up and down. Below, cars and trucks can be seen moving along a busy road. In the background of the video, a voiceover can be heard saying, “Are you seeing this? This is crazy.”
As of the publication of this report, the video had received more than 15,000 reactions, 580 shares, and had been viewed more than 1.3 million times.
In addition, on August 26, the news outlet “Dainik Sokalbela” published the video with the same claim.
Using scenes from the same video, several personal accounts (1, 2) claim it shows “images of the world’s most modern and developed nation.”
To verify the claim, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search and found an exact match with a video uploaded on August 24 to an Instagram account named “Img2kool,” run by someone identified as “Anderson Westfield.” The English caption of the video reads, “Comment ‘prompt’ and I’ll message you the exact prompt I used to create this video! Made with HaloSuperAgent.com.” HaloSuperAgent is an AI model for generating images and videos. The account’s bio reads, “Learn how I make viral AI content.” A review of the account’s other posted videos shows that all of them are videos of various fictional scenes created using artificial intelligence (1, 2, 3).
In further verification, when checked with the AI content detection tool Hive Moderation, the video showed a 91.4% likelihood of having been AI-generated.
In other words, the video of a homeless person living on the pillar of an overpass in Los Angeles is not real; the video was created using AI.
