How Social Media is Spreading L.A. Misinformation Like Wildfire | McAfee Blog

Fewer cities have been imagined and reimagined in apocalyptic destruction more than Los Angeles. Hollywood has flattened, burned, shaken, and submerged the city countless times on screen. Yet, when destruction leaps from fiction to reality, it becomes an incomprehensible horror. 

The recent Los Angeles County wildfires have left devastation in their wake. An area over twice the size of Manhattan has been scorched, reducing more than 10,000 homes and businesses to ash. The death toll currently stands at ten, though officials warn that number may rise. Sheriff Robert Luna’s grim description at a press conference underscores the gravity of the disaster: “It looks like an atomic bomb dropped in these areas.” 

Debunking the Myth: Hollywood Sign Safe Amid Wildfire Rumors on Social Media

Social media and local broadcast news have been flooded with deceptive images claiming the Hollywood sign is engulfed in flames, with many people alleging that the iconic landmark is “surrounded by fire.” 

Fact check: The Hollywood sign is still standing and is intact, confirmed Jeff Zarrinnam, chairman of the Hollywood Sign Trust. 

Zarrinnam, clarified to Reuters that the landmark remains unharmed and suggested that the misleading posts circulating online are likely created using AI-generated images and videos. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Hollywood sign, perched on Mount Lee in the Santa Monica Mountains, is far from any current evacuation zones. To date, there have been no reports of fires near the Hollywood sign. 

McAfee researchers have examined several of the images being shared on social media, and we can confirm they are deepfakes. 

Figure 1. McAfee’s AI heatmap technology identifies areas of AI image manipulation

McAfee’s deepfake detection technology flags the image of the Hollywood Hills as AI-generated, with the fire serving as a key factor in its analysis. Further investigation traced the image back to Gemini, an AI-based image generation platform. This finding underscores the increasing sophistication of fake images synthesis and the continuous advancements in McAfee’s deepfake detection tools.