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By Esther Chan, Hardik Vyas, Lydia Morrish
-The aftermath of Hurricane Milton has left a trail of misinformation surrounding relief efforts in hard-hit Florida, including conspiracy theories about officials controlling the weather.
The storm's devastation was not as severe as initially feared in Florida, one of the many states that were battered by Hurricane Helene nearly two weeks earlier.
A wave of misinformation saw at least three congressional Republicans condemn conspiracy theories repeated by fellow members of their party.
Social media accounts also shared AI-generated content showing false imagery of the damage. Others used AI to amplify political messages ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
“This idea of influencing people’s perception of reality, and the real impact it has, is huge,” said Henry Ajder, an independent adviser on generative AI.
“We are seeing on social media the narrative around Democrats controlling the weather, AI-generated imagery of how FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) are failing… fueling a pretty hateful and impactful fire. This makes it more difficult for these people to do their job in incredibly challenging circumstances.”
Here are some of the misinformation narratives that emerged:
CLAIM: Images show flooded Disney World in Orlando
WHAT WE KNOW
AI-generated images were shared online alongside false captions stating they showed the devastation caused by the storm at the theme park.
An analysis run through TrueMedia.org, an online deepfake detection platform, concluded there is “substantial evidence of manipulation," adding that text-to-AI image generator Stable Diffusion was the likely source of these images.
Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an email that their models flagged these images as likely AI-generated.
“These three images are (not very good) AI-generated images,” he added. “There are tell-tale and obvious structural defects in all images including inconsistent reflections in the water.”
“The danger of this content is that it further muddies the waters as officials are trying to save lives and it casts everything we see into doubt. This poisoning of the information ecosystem is incredibly dangerous for our society and democracy.”
The theme park, which was closed on Wednesday and Thursday, reopened on Friday but its website did not specify if there was any damage at the location. Walt Disney World did not respond to a request for comment.
CLAIM: Video showing frequency waves pumping through Hurricane Milton are “not natural”
WHAT WE KNOW
A 41-second clip shared on X, clocking over 1.5 million views, shows a wall of clouds rotating around a central core and occasional blue flashes appearing in or around those clouds.
The video was shared as supposed evidence of unnatural “frequency waves” emerging from Milton, suggesting the storm was engineered to be a weapon.
But the video can be traced to an Instagram post published by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University.
A CIRA spokesperson told Reuters that “frequency waves” do not exist and the video shows cloud movement during the formation of Milton with lightning colorized blue for visibility.
CLAIM: Underwater imagery shows HAARP facility controlling Florida weather
WHAT WE KNOW
A video shared online shows a person using Google Maps’ satellite imagery around Florida to zoom in on an underwater facility, claiming it belongs to the Alaska-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which has often been invoked in narratives suggesting the government can control the weather.
But the image shows a coral nursery off the Florida Keys run by a conservation group, not a HAARP facility.
A spokesperson for HAARP also told Reuters: "HAARP can’t create, modify or manipulate a hurricane.”
CLAIM: FEMA official says they have plans to “execute” people in an audio clip
WHAT WE KNOW
A 2021 audio clip repurposed online to make false suggestions that FEMA had plans to “execute” people as Hurricane Milton barreled towards Florida earlier this week gathered over 800,000 impressions.
In the original clip (timestamp 20:03) from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is seen making an apparent verbal slip-up, saying, “we plan to execute…” before correcting himself while detailing the evacuation plan for “70,000-80,000 people.”
CLAIM: FEMA funds for disaster relief are used to house “illegal immigrants”
WHAT WE KNOW
This is misleading. Posts on social media have accused the Biden-Harris administration of diverting funds allocated for FEMA disaster relief to help house “illegal immigrants.”
These unfounded claims were amplified by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Congressman Jim Jordan.
But FEMA’s page responding to hurricane-related rumors says, “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs.”
FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund received over $20 billion from Congress for fiscal 2024, according to its Budget Overview (page 7).
The Shelter and Services Program, created in 2023 and administered by FEMA, is a separate appropriated grant program to provide shelter to “noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”
When the program was first created, Congress directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to transfer $800 million from its operations budget to FEMA for the Shelter and Services Program.
(Reporting by Esther Chan, Hardik Vyas and Lydia Morrish; additional reporting by Rosemary An; Editing by Stephanie Burnett, Christine Soares, William Maclean)
