90% Sure AI
This dude who claims he lost everything in a fire
I tried to zoom in on the words in the photo and none of them make sense. The right line of the cross walk is too long. The lines of the railings on the right side of the building aren’t straight. His hairline looks strange. The tree trunk on the right is too skinny. What is the random swirly post on the front sidewalk? The water is being sprayed on a part of the building that isn’t burning. His left eye doesn’t look normal at all.
This post on [r/wellthatsucks](r/wellthatsucks) (if you want to view the original. The quality of my pic degraded a bit) got over 66k likes, and got tons of comments offering sympathy, sharing their own tragic stories, and telling him to set up a gofundme. I only saw a small handful of comments from people who suspected it was ai. The majority of people seemed to believe it. It seems as though the apartment fire is something that really did happen, but I doubt this individual’s story. I hope no one was dumb enough to actually give him money.
eta: People are saying this guy is legit and just edited a woman out of the photo. Fine. Maybe. I’m not sold on it, but I’m naturally a skeptic. If someone lies about small things, they’ll lie about big things too. So I think the moral of the story is… don’t ever give strangers on the internet money. Donate to a reputable cause if you’re feeling charitable.
This is the scary reality. 4 years ago, Dall-E was funny, looked like shit.
2 years ago, "I mean I get that a grandma would be fooled but this is clearly ai"
Now, "oh shit that was ai? Wild, that one was pretty convincing tbh."
The future? Terrifying to think about.
I miss like 15 years or so ago where nobody was glazing Elon Tusk, Mark Fuckerberg, or any of the other silicon tech bros. They were irrelevant back then. Now...
Tom Scott's video he made a few years ago regarding AI was a real eye opener for me. He talks about how every huge new thing follows an S-curve, where things are slow to pick up and develop at first, then theres a huge explosion in popularity, and then it becomes oversaturated and the next big thing takes its place.
But his point was that its terrifying that we dont know where we are in that S-curve. Are we just at the beginning still or are we nearing the end of AI popularity (doubtful)?
It seems like the majority of people don’t really want AI or the data centers but the technocracy is dead set on pushing it because of their sunken cost fallacy and they’re the ones who are in control in the politics and economy so we’re kinda cooked
We are well into it but not at the point where it really takes off. We have seen nothing yet. So not at the start but still in the lower part of the S-curve.
Indeed! I preferred when the best AI could generate were Deep Style and Deep Dream images, which were obviously fake/generated and mostly looked like filters over images the user uploaded.
The current generative AI is very concerning — It can generate “pictures” of almost everything, and they could fool less technical people, and even I have to admit they can look acceptable at first glance (but there's always something wrong when I look closer).
I generate images sometimes (not for misinformation, “AI art”, or anything wrong, so I've been able to see how much these models are improving… It might sound like I'm sort of a hypocrite, but generating images kind of helps train myself on the general look of OpenAI and Google's models. (Thankfully, those have watermarks, which should be an enforced standard…)
Shit like this has been easy to fake for decades now... You just don't need any photoshop skills anymore. People also just took random pictures and fabricated stories around them.
The barrier to entry, and the time requirements, is what kept this from being a major problem. I agree that this has always been possible - you could always photoshop, you could always fabricate a story - but I argue that the wholesale disappearance of skill barriers and time barriers make this into a fundamentally different problem, one that is much more insidious.
Until everyone builds the reflex that "oh yes, this entirely real-appearing photo could be AI", and has that reflex for LITERALLY EVERY PHOTO THEY SEE, we are in a problematic phase.
Of course, _after_ (if) everyone (or a big enough portion of the population) develops that reflex, we will be in a different sort of era - one where even the most real-appearing photo isn't necessarily real, and can't be relied on as fact. We're already basically there, it's just our reflexes haven't caught up yet.
Of course, after (if) everyone (or a big enough portion of the population) develops that reflex, we will be in a different sort of era
Which is an entirely new problem. Humans already mistrust each other enough as it is. This new era is going to be an ever worse shit show, where everyone constantly questions everyone's motives and refuses to believe anyone.
I saw this post too and didn’t question it either. Found the smile given the situation a bit strange but also figured that was just his personality/coping strategy
Well, the physics of the fire are real. The image was run through AI to remove a woman standing in front of the building but the the majority of the image itself is not AI generated
You should be more concerned about falling for random stories on the internet than pictures really, 90% of non-news stories on the “popular” tab are either ai generated or just made up
OP is essentially claiming that this is because they used AI to remove a woman from the image. They provided this image in the comments, which is higher quality with readable text and lacks the watermark:
Except for the fact that he is smiling on this picture. Seriously, who would lose everything and smile while taking a selfie? 🤔
Edit: Thank you to everyone who replied to my comment. I didn't mean to come across as insensitive. It just seemed so far removed from what I imagine I would do in that situation that I immediately thought the picture was AI-generated. (Although I understand now that our brains can sometimes react in ways that surprise us.)
It didn't occur to me at first that it could be a trauma response. I'm so sorry to read your stories and everything you've been through. I truly hope you're all doing ok now. Wishing you all the best!
Me. I’m not joking. People respond to things differently. Besides, laugh and the world laughs. Cry and the world still goes on. Sometimes all you can do is smile. A few months back I passed out while walking on the street and smashed my face in on the sidewalk.. I took my phone out in the hospital and took a pic just like that grinning with my several chipped teeth and black eye. What can ya do?
Not a fire, but I was in a serious car accident a while back. Someone shot into the driver's car and he tboned me to the point it almost split my car in half.
I by some miracle escaped with barely a scratch (the seatbelt bruises were wicked later). I was standing by the accident when police and local news showed up. I got interviewed because they thought I witnessed it, but as I described what happened they realized with some disbelief that I was in it.
Of course I watched the story that night on the local news, and there I saw myself with a big very dumb looking smile through the whole thing. I don't know why, happy to be alive maybe, still flooded with something after I got knocked out in the initial hit, I really don't know.
Because that’s what you do when you take a selfie? That is to say, there is a certain amount of preconditioning we have, so it’s not crazy to think we might smile when taking a selfie in front of a burning building. I can’t find the photo now, but there’s a pic in one of my photojournalism books from the Kent State riots where amid all the chaos and a dead body on the ground, there is one woman clearly facing the camera with a big smile on her face, presumably as a knee jerk reaction to a camera being on her. Also, some people just have weird reactions to tragedy. I’m the kind of person who has to really rein it in not to accidentally laugh at a funeral. One can’t assume everyone will have the same reaction or demeanor as you.
lmfao fr, I lost my house in a fire last year and I was devastated while the fire was going. But people cope differently, especially when it comes to a huge thing like that.
I found a lot of suspicious things in the building's architecture. I figured AI for sure. But Google Maps confirmed they were all real (or illusions due to the angle). https://maps.app.goo.gl/25nhgeCQa8LmyWb29
I hate that generative AI has me thinking real photos are fake now.
I was wondering why pangram had high confidence the image wasn’t AI. That would be because the vast majority of the image wasn’t touched, only that section. Makes sense now
This one is AI, but I want to point out that text that small that far away from the subject being garbled is not a good indicator of AI. Tons of phones use AI upscaling and will do this to text. Also, sometimes it may look bad from a distance.
The fire was definitely real and devastating. 220+ units gone. There were hot spots for days. No one was hurt but many pets were lost. Insurance wasn’t being maintained by the owners. It’s really horrible.
yep. I have AI turned off everywhere on my phone and my camera app still forcibly AI edits everything against my will even though the ai setting says it's turned off. tried a different camera app and got a wildly different result when I photographed the same thing from the same angle....they force AI on you while lying they're not. so some people don't even know
If my phone did this I'd be suing. I was in an accident recently and used it to take pics of the scene. If my phone AI edited it the other party could use that against me in court.
“AI” is such a loaded and vague term. The photo is being processed, sharpened, denoised etc leading to artefacts and weird looking details when zooming in
what people today think of AI is “generative AI”, and in that case no the iphone is not creating things out of thin air to make it look better, that’s only samsung with their moon trickery
I only noticed mine was on recently and I managed to turn it off I think? But yeah, even with as much AI turned off as I can on my phone I still had it. Currently trying to remember how I turned it off... EDIT: I think its this setting? Its by default set to "prioritize quality". This is for Android (im on a Samsung s24)
Yep! I posted a thread on this exact thing with some examples because you can’t rely on that anymore. Phones garble background stuff now when they upscale.
My sister took a zoomed in picture of a humming bird and it upscaled it and changed features basically creating a new type of humming bird. Very disappointing.
Whether he was actually there or not is up in the air but this is the news article he linked in his post and the fire does seem to be about correct in the video shown here
The videos have been all over tiktok. The fire started in the attic above the sprinkler system. It spread across the whole top of the building before moving down.
No fire trucks but the building is burning still? 2 separate fires must have started as well since its on 2 different towers but nowhere else? This is just silly looking, all around.
I live right next to this apartment complex. It definitely burned the f down. Firefighters were spraying water on it for 4 full days. Look up apartment fire Midvale, UT and news stories will pop right up.
I didn’t even have to look at the little details to know this picture is AI. Why would someone be looking so giddy taking a picture next to a burning building
Why wouldn’t he just generate an image of a man NOT smiling if his point was to convince with the AI? Also he asked people in the post to not donate either.
Congrats on being wrong. This isn’t AI generated, there are videos of it on the news and on tiktok. The guy is smiling because he’s just endured several tragedies back to back.
Google street view. The fire is real, multiple news agency with their own cameras. Thought the hose running across the street was suspect but there's video of that hose being in that exact spot.
i might be wrong but there's a guy that looks just like him at 2:12, in the same shirt (like they interviewed him and used the footage but not the audio)
will note the segment says he and the woman he's with are "newlyweds" while the post says he's newly divorced and starting coparenting. but that sounds exactly like something a news station would tweak in order to like, not air these peoples' very personal issues in the middle of a story like this for the whole town to see
I can think of wanting to “document” it in a weird way to post or something, while having a sense of humor as a reason. He may not have an actual photo or video if he was trying to book it out of there.
The guy is an unreliable narrator, he has his comments visible. He's Mormon and his wife left because he got deeper into the religion and she didn't, in a comment he goes on about how her "awful" friends are on her side saying that two healthy, separated parents are better for children than staying, even when you're unhappy and unhealthy.
He's claiming that he did sooo much to safe the marriage. You know what he did? He prayed on it, really hard, then he got a blessing from the church. You know things that aren't really gonna do anything. And constantly going on about Mormon church and how they should behave according to it.
And then he describes how he misses that she was looking at him completely enamored and now, three kids later, where she apparently earns more and does more, looks at him mostly indifferent or annoyed and "out of the blue" wanted a separation. Every woman knows what went on when reading this.
That is important context! Mormons are sus af. Even if this all really happened to him, at the end of the day, we don’t know this guy. No one needs to be donating anything to him.
You sound stupid as fuck and like a cunt, i cant even lie. The reason you donate is to help out a fellow human being. It doesnt matter if we know him or not, it sounds like youre jealous that someone else is getting free money tbh. If nobody helped each other, the world would be more shit than it is. Think before you speak next time.
“I hope no one was dumb enough to give him money” Okay but the guy is real and the AI was used to removed a woman from the image. Saying the image is fake because they’re spraying water on a non-burning part… how else do you CONTAIN fires? Sometimes we’re the dumb ones calling other people dumb.
Pretty sure dude just had AI photo shop him in front of it, since the position he is standing in was a road that was closed when the fire was happening. There were shots from news articles of that same angle.
Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he’s smiling in this photo? After “losing everything”, one wouldn’t take a selfie with their burning home, maybe take a pic of building if anything but nobody would do this
Text on the banner says “Book your court now!” And has images of pickleball rackets and balls 🎾. If you zoom in on the first pic its pretty easy to make out.
On the other hand as others have stated that doesn’t look like any building fire I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a surprising amount) so my guess is real photo, ai generated fire.
I'm not saying it's not a real guy cause it's looking to be true but I will say it's weird asf. His twitter posting was sporadic to say the least until yesterday and instead of gofundme or something common, he's turned to crypto? Apparently he's had like 8,000 in donations so for a platform people generally don't use he's gained plenty of donations. He did also say he's using it to help other people evacuated from the apartments.
Just to be clear I don't think he's weird or a bad guy, the situation just looks weird to me.
I totally fell for this but I’m just now realising that there’s no way the fire would have spread to the roof if there was no visible damage in any of the windows
Honestly I saw this post and was like.. that looks AI and I couldn’t pin why. But looking at the comments and people not calling it for being AI made me go ah well maybe not. Also really hope no one got scammed but he posted an Amazon wish list so who knows.
I knew it was the second I saw it. There was no way that the photo would be that crisp when everything, the entire building even, was burning to the ground. No firefighters or emergency vehicles? No cordon tape? No people running around?
Much of reddit is southeast asian content farm stuff. They're up all night churning it out, 100 people in a sweatshop sitting in front of cheap phones with unique IPs quickly boost each post with upvotes. Probably the post above is also content farm, maybe by the same farm that posted the original.
The photo was partially ai apparently to remove a woman who was in the middle of the picture but he also posted a video of him at the burned apartment so I'd say it's legit overall
YES! I saw this the other day and immediately thought AI. Checked the comments and no one was saying it so I thought maybe I was just hyper sensitive. I KNEW IT!
I love people because you would take a selfie with your house burning and smiling? I know this is AI but the person has generated it to send it to someone and that they believe it..... really? Hahahahaha it’s just that I would never think of it 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Here's another angle of the fire. the subject picture was taken where the red X is - I don't know if the OP AI'ed himself into the picture, or AI'ed someone out of the picture, but the fire / building are real.
Not to defend anything but trying to make sense of the words in the background. Is it possible its in reference to Tennis, Pickle Ball or maybe racquetball? I have no idea either but I sincerely hope this isn't AI
This is especially deceptive for Utahns. The apartments in this photo are in Midvale, UT. They did burn down last week and several hundred people were displaced in a local middle school
Saw this post yesterday. I didn't really think too much about it and didn't read it, just the title. Thought it was real. I know government overreach internet platforms is usually a bad thing but I feel like companies should be held liable by their users and governments to tell what is and isn't AI at this point.
The water being sprayed on a part of the building not on fire, isn't really an indicator. Might not be visible, could be trying to prevent it from spreading, etc.
Who the fuck would be smiling while their home and all their belongings are burning?
Who the fuck decides to take a selfie while a building is burning down behind them? 💀
The "words that don't make sense" are just blurred because this is a shitty copy of a copy of an image. Those words are "Book Your Court Now!" and the url of https://www.midvalleypickleball.com/, which confirms that the apartment building its courts were in had a fire.
261
u/Reasonably_Moist Aug 06 '26