Misused images & videos

30 cases in this category

Easy

What detail should be an immediate red flag?

A message spreads in alarm: “An entire street flooded, with a crocodile swimming between the cars, and this happened yesterday, right in the city!” The photo looks sharp and real. Two days later, the very same image circulates for a completely different storm, in a different region. Same street, same crocodile.

How sharp and clear the crocodile looks in the water
The same photo, two floods, two dates
A flooded street is a flooded street, no matter the date

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The same photo, two floods, two dates

The exact same image showing up for two different disasters on two different dates is impossible if it's a genuine local photo. Dramatic images get recycled from one event to the next, and that is a solid reason to check where a picture actually came from. Sharpness and a realistic look never prove authenticity.

What's the simplest explanation for what you're seeing?

Sasha gets sent a quick clip: a kid jumps on a trampoline and comes down looking much higher than where they started. The video is only three seconds long. Sasha shares it, captioned “look, reversed physics!”

The kid genuinely bounces higher on the way down
The trampoline has some kind of secret mechanism
The clip was slowed down or played backwards

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The clip was slowed down or played backwards

A very short clip showing something physically impossible has often simply been sped up, slowed down or reversed, which changes how the motion reads. Watching it at normal speed changes everything. Simple edits like cutting, speeding up or reversing footage are some of the easiest and most effective ways to fake something.

What jumps out to someone doing a quick check?

An image circulates: a white polar bear walking through a snow-covered village among old stone buildings. The caption reads: “Climate change is bringing bears into towns now.” The image looks very sharp. Looking closely, the bear doesn't quite sit in the scene around it.

Snow-covered old buildings are a classic backdrop
The shadows don't agree with each other
The bear has really beautiful fur

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The shadows don't agree with each other

When two elements of an image come from different sources, the shadows, lighting and reflections don't quite line up: here they fall in different directions, so the bear and the village cannot come from the same photo. It's a detail that rushed composites almost always miss. Checking whether the lighting is consistent is a fast way to spot a fake.

What's the right move to catch this without needing any scientific expertise?

A photo circulates: an enormous shark leaping out of the water right next to a crowded beach. The caption: “Unbelievable!” The animal looks huge next to the swimmers. The water around it is barely disturbed, and the nearest swimmers haven't reacted at all.

Call in a marine biology expert
Count the pixels making up the shark
Compare the proportions with the calm water

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Compare the proportions with the calm water

A digitally enlarged animal usually forgets the physical forces it should be creating: water, spray, waves. An animal that size would have churned up the whole area rather than leaving a clean, gentle splash. Just checking for mismatches with the surrounding context, such as water that stays oddly calm and swimmers who look far too relaxed, is enough. You don't need to judge pixel by pixel; you check whether the physics holds up.

What's the most obvious warning sign?

A screenshot shows a TV news banner: “URGENT ALERT” in huge red letters, with a slightly pixelated logo and the line “Authorities demand immediate evacuation of the city.” A few hours later, nothing had actually changed.

The letters and the logo are slightly wrong
The authorities really are running an evacuation, it's just not a big deal
A screenshot is automatically proof that something is true

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The letters and the logo are slightly wrong

A fake news banner is easy to spot once you look closely: the font won't be quite right, the pixelation will look off, the alignment won't be as clean as a broadcaster's. Real channels follow extremely strict visual standards, so a banner that looks homemade is almost always a fabrication.

What's the fastest way to check an image like this?

An image shows a child asking: “Mum, why do I have to recycle if it all ends up in the rubbish anyway?” followed by a misleading answer written underneath. The caption reads: “Kids ask the best questions!” It has been shared many thousands of times, and nobody in the replies seems to have looked at the writing itself.

Zoom in on the lettering
Count how many people have shared it
Ask someone whether a child would really ask that question

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Zoom in on the lettering

Text that is AI-generated, or clumsily added afterwards, tends to have irregular letters, uneven heights, odd shapes and strange pixel patterns. Zooming in on the text itself is the fastest way to catch a fake, because real text on a real photo has letters that are consistent and clean.

What technical detail is a big warning sign here?

A massive crowd in front of a landmark shows up on social media, captioned “A million people showed up!” But zoom into the image and the crowd at the back doesn't hold up: the further you look, the less the faces behave like a real crowd.

Crowds are always a bit blurry in the background
The same block of crowd, copied over and over
A million is a perfectly ordinary number to use

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The same block of crowd, copied over and over

Artificially inflating a crowd by copy-pasting sections of it creates strange repetitions, identical faces and a broken sense of depth. Real gatherings have natural variation; faked ones have visual clones. It's easy to catch just by zooming in.

What's the biggest visual trick here?

A photo shows two landscapes side by side: on the left, a lush green mountain; on the right, the same mountain, but bare, grey and battered. Caption: “Before and after, what climate change is doing.” But the left photo was taken on a sunny day in golden light, and the right one on a grey, overcast day.

Two photos are just two photos, nothing more to it
A grey mountain is naturally always going to look less appealing
Golden light on one side, grey overcast on the other

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Golden light on one side, grey overcast on the other

A fair before-and-after needs the same lighting, the same angle, the same season. When the light changes this dramatically, golden against grey, it changes the entire look of a scene, and you can't tell whether the effect comes from the climate or from the photographer's timing. Checking whether the conditions are actually comparable is how you check whether the comparison is honest.

What's the most important thing the reverse search revealed?

A photo of a street devastated by an earthquake circulates with the caption: “Disaster struck the region yesterday, everything's collapsing!” Someone runs a reverse image search and discovers the photo had already been used in an article about a completely different earthquake, two years earlier.

That the street really was in ruins
That the photo was two years old, from another disaster
That reverse image searches are basically useless

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: That the photo was two years old, from another disaster

A reverse image search shows a photo's whole history: where it has been published, when, and for what event. It's the single most powerful move for catching recycled images. In seconds you know whether you're looking at something fresh or something repurposed for a disaster it never showed.

Related reflex(es): 3. What's the date? · 2. What's the source?

What's the lesson here?

An image shows a rare, striking weather phenomenon: a cloud shaped like a giant ring, with an almost perfect circular gap in the middle. The caption claims it's evidence of secret weather manipulation. A quick check shows this kind of cloud is a real, documented natural phenomenon.

Captions that sound scientific are always accurate
The cloud is real and documented
If an image looks this rare, it has to be fake

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The cloud is real and documented

This particular formation has a name, an explanation and photographs in meteorology references: a few minutes with a weather encyclopaedia settles it. That is the useful habit here, because a rare phenomenon is exactly what a false caption likes to borrow. Before calling something manipulation, look up whether the thing in the picture is already a documented part of nature.

Related reflex(es): 2. What's the source? · 5. Who else is saying it?

Medium

What move should have happened before sharing this?

After a major flood, a photo circulates showing cars swept away by a wall of dark water. The caption: “Look what storms do now!” A reverse image search shows the exact same photo circulated five years earlier, for a completely different flood, in a different region. Same composition, same cars, same angle.

Count how many people had already shared it
Judge whether the water in the photo looks normal
Run a reverse image search on the photo

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Run a reverse image search on the photo

Dramatic images are the champions of recycling. A reverse image search, through any common search engine's image tool, shows in seconds everywhere a photo has already circulated, and where it was really taken. It's the single most powerful move before sharing an alarming image.

Related reflex(es): 3. What's the date? · 2. What's the source?

What should catch your eye first?

A short video shows a dog racing across a park at an almost unbelievable speed. Caption: “Fastest dog in the world, filmed yesterday right in our city!” In the comments, everyone is amazed at the dog. Nobody says anything about the rest of the frame.

The whole frame is moving too fast, not just the dog
The dog's breed: some breeds really are known for their speed, so it's plausible
The view count: at this many views, a fake would already have been called out

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The whole frame is moving too fast, not just the dog

Speeding up footage is the simplest trick in the book, and it needs no fancy software. The tell usually hides around the edges: passers-by, leaves, cars, everything following the same unnatural rhythm. The move: find the original version and compare the speed. And popularity has never once validated anything.

Related reflex(es): 4. Does the image show what they claim?

What combination of clues should make you sceptical?

A striking, high-quality image shows an elephant with shimmering, butterfly-like wings. Caption: “New species discovered in the rainforest!” The image looks extremely smooth and polished. No scientific source is named anywhere, and no zoologist is quoted.

Missing texture, odd reflections, unreal smoothness
If it's high quality, it must be authentic
A beautiful image is a real image

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Missing texture, odd reflections, unreal smoothness

An AI-generated image often has a suspicious “smoothness”: the details lack natural irregularity, the textures are too clean, and light reflections don't follow consistent physics. What settles it is the combination of clues, not the beauty of the picture, because spectacular photographs can be perfectly real. Here the clues all point the same way, and a winged elephant is also a claim about biology that no scientific source supports.

What's the problem here?

A photo shows a little girl smiling in front of a chalkboard. The board reads: “I helped 100 people today!” The caption gushes: “The innocence that's changing the world!” But something about the writing on the board doesn't sit right with the rest of the picture.

A child genuinely helping that many people
The text was added to the photo afterwards
The chalkboard exists in the photo, so the claim must be true

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The text was added to the photo afterwards

Adding text to a photo afterwards is technically detectable: the letters aren't handwritten, the font looks stamped on rather than written, and the shadow of the text doesn't match the direction of the light falling on her face. Checking whether the shadows and lighting are consistent is how you catch additions like this.

What move changes everything here?

In the middle of a heated debate about school lunches, a ten-second clip circulates: the principal walks out of a parents' meeting partway through, looking annoyed. Caption: “She won't even listen to the families!” The clip cuts off right as she reaches the door.

Find the full recording of the meeting
Check how sharp the footage is: a blurry clip is often a faked one
Count how many parents in the room look like they approve of her leaving

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Find the full recording of the meeting

Ten seconds pulled out of an hour-long meeting can make a scene say almost anything: you don't see what was said right before, or whether she came back two minutes later. A very short clip paired with a very confident caption is exactly the signal to go and find the full version. Context is the judge here, not the clip.

What should have been checked first?

A photo circulates showing crumbling ruins in a very old coastal town. Caption: “Coastal towns being abandoned because of climate change!” The picture is genuine, and nothing about it has been retouched. Nobody sharing it has said where or when it was taken.

Whether the ruins are genuinely old
The date and the context the photo came from
How sharp and clear the ruins look in the photo

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The date and the context the photo came from

A completely real photo of a completely real ruin can still lie to you if its context gets swapped out. This one was taken at a controlled archaeological dig site about thirty years ago, and it becomes “proof” of climate disaster purely because of the caption attached to it. Always check who took this, when, where and why. Context changes everything.

Related reflex(es): 3. What's the date? · 2. What's the source?

What move reveals the trick?

An image shows a giant elephant walking between city buildings. Obviously impossible. But zooming in, the elephant was clearly lifted from one real photo and pasted onto a real cityscape. Both pieces come from genuine sources, falsely combined into one.

Ask whether elephants live in cities
Judge whether the elephant's pixels match the city's
Search for each element on its own

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Search for each element on its own

A composite can be built from two completely real images from two completely real sources. The elephant is real, the city is real, but put together the whole thing is fake. A reverse search on each key element separately can reveal that they come from different photos, taken at different times and in different places.

What's the right read on this?

A photo shows a dinosaur-like creature walking down a road. Clearly biologically impossible. Looking closely at the join between the animal and the road, several small things fail to add up.

A composite: texture, shadows and pixels disagree
It's a genuine animal
The pixels are all perfectly consistent

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: A composite: texture, shadows and pixels disagree

Good composites give themselves away once you check: do the shadows actually line up? Does the subject's texture match the background's? Are there faint pixel-level glitches right where the two pieces meet? Here all three fail. Even a well-made composite always forgets something.

What signal should raise doubt first?

A screenshot circulates showing a well-known news channel's on-screen banner announcing: “ALERT: meteor approaching.” At first glance the message seems fairly credible. A few hours later, the actual channel denies ever airing it.

Small flaws in a banner that should be pixel-perfect
A broadcast banner is automatically authentic
The channel is the one announcing the alert, so it must be true

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Small flaws in a banner that should be pixel-perfect

A TV channel's visual standards are relentless: every font, every colour, every pixel follows strict house rules, and its banners are very tightly controlled. A homemade one will always carry small flaws somewhere, an odd typeface or imperfect alignment. Before believing a dramatic banner, a trained eye checks whether the font is exactly right and the alignment perfectly clean.

What's the lesson here?

A photo captures someone mid-flip at the peak of a gymnastics move, set against a glowing sunset. The image is stunning. The photographer's public gallery shows the whole sequence, frame by frame, along with a dozen other shots taken in the same light that evening.

The photo is real: luck, light and timing lined up
Every spectacular-looking image is generated or edited
If an image looks this spectacular, it must be fake

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The photo is real: luck, light and timing lined up

A whole sequence, shot in the same light, is exactly what a real photograph leaves behind and what a generated image cannot produce: one image arrives alone, a shoot arrives as a series. Skill and timing explain the rest. So the habit worth keeping is to look for the neighbouring frames and the photographer, rather than deciding from how impressive a single picture is.

Related reflex(es): 2. What's the source? · 5. Who else is saying it?

Tough

What's the trap in this case?

An AI-generated image shows a flawless portrait of a woman standing in a forest. The AI work is excellent: the skin texture looks almost perfect, the hair looks real, the expression is natural. But looking closely at the eyes, the light reflections there don't follow the same logic as the reflections in her hair or the trees. And her left hand has six fingers.

Perfectly rendered eyes are always a sign of authenticity
If an image looks flawless, it must be real
Only tiny inconsistencies give it away, not the overall look

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Only tiny inconsistencies give it away, not the overall look

The best generative AI still forgets small details: reflections that should be consistent across the whole image, a hand with an extra finger, textures that don't quite behave the same way everywhere. The AI here is good enough that overall impression tells you nothing. The move: hunt for those subtle inconsistencies instead of being swept up by the overall quality.

What move should have raised doubts among the first people who shared this?

A photo circulates from a religious gathering, showing a glowing “apparition” in the sky. Caption: “Look at this miracle!” The photo looks genuine, shot on an older camera. Nothing in the scene would obviously produce a light like that, and when people ask for other shots of the same moment, only this single one ever turns up.

Look for other photographs of the same moment, from other angles
A photo shot on an older camera is automatically proof of age
Apparitions like this are always genuine

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Look for other photographs of the same moment, from other angles

An event witnessed by a crowd of people normally produces several photos, from several angles. Zero other photos of the exact same moment is already suspicious on its own. Also worth checking: where is that light actually coming from, and is there a logical source for it? A magical light with no source behind it is usually a sign of editing.

Related reflex(es): 5. Who else is saying it? · 2. What's the source?

What's the real challenge in a case like this?

A three-minute video of someone playing guitar circulates online. The video quality looks ordinary, the audio has authentic-sounding background noise, and the person's movements look completely natural. But the video is actually generated from start to finish: the fingers move with an almost mathematical precision, the audio was generated to match, and a handful of pixels show tiny inconsistencies.

Trace the video's origin and check its metadata
If it runs three minutes long, it must be real
A long video is automatically authentic

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Trace the video's origin and check its metadata

The best fake videos are now genuinely difficult to catch with the naked eye, and specialised tools are often needed. The real check happens elsewhere: trace the source, look at the metadata, follow the sharing history. Ask who posted this first, when, and on what device. Metadata often tells a very different story than the video itself.

Related reflex(es): 3. What's the date? · 2. What's the source?

What's the trap in this case?

A composite photo circulates: a mountain landscape at sunrise, with a bright aurora glowing above it. Spectacular. Each piece, the mountain, the sunrise, the aurora, comes from a real, genuine photograph taken in a real place, and none of them has been retouched.

Each piece is real, so the combination must be real too
Real pieces, assembled into a physical impossibility
Auroras are always this spectacular-looking

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Real pieces, assembled into a physical impossibility

A composite can be built entirely from real photos taken from real sources and still show something that could never happen: you never see an aurora and a sunrise together, because the brightness of one washes out the other. The check: does the physics of the scene actually hold up? Is there a light source that contradicts another part of the image?

What's the real challenge here?

A photo appears to show a well-known figure in a compromising situation. It is a brilliant piece of editing, modified pixel by pixel to place the person somewhere they never actually were. Zooming into certain details, there are extremely subtle inconsistencies in the reflections and lighting, but they are barely visible.

Perfect shadows and reflections always mean an image is real
A photo is always authentic by default
The eye can't settle it: trace the source instead

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: The eye can't settle it: trace the source instead

A pixel-perfect edit made by a skilled professional is nearly undetectable to the naked eye, so judging by eye alone is a losing game. The real defence: trace the image's source, and check with the person themselves or a trusted third party, meaning their team or their official accounts. Never share something like this without checking with the person it shows.

Related reflex(es): 2. What's the source? · 5. Who else is saying it?

What dilemma does this case create?

An image shows an extraordinary, rare natural phenomenon: a near-perfect tower-shaped ice formation on a mountainside. The photo looks genuine, clearly shot with good equipment. You search and find absolutely nothing online about it: no mention anywhere, no source. But this kind of formation does genuinely exist; it is just extremely rare.

If something is this rare, it must be true
Nothing here settles it, so keep looking and say so
If something is this rare, it must be fake

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Nothing here settles it, so keep looking and say so

Some images are simply near-impossible to verify without outside sources to compare against: this one could be authentic, since the phenomenon is real, or composited, and its very rarity is what makes it hard to check. The lesson: it's completely fine to say “I don't know yet” and keep looking longer. Admitting you can't decide is its own form of intelligence.

What basic move got skipped here?

A video shows a street demonstration with a huge crowd. You cannot see a single sign, and you cannot hear who is speaking: just a mass of people. It is captioned with a confident explanation of what the crowd wants, and it has been edited down to a fraction of the original footage.

If you can see the crowd, you already know what they want
A crowd video is automatically proof of something
Search for the complete video and its context

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Search for the complete video and its context

A video stripped of its context, meaning the signs, the speeches and the original reason people gathered, can be twisted into meaning the opposite of what actually happened. Searching for the full video, for who was speaking and for what the event was really about is the move that gets skipped almost every time.

Related reflex(es): 2. What's the source? · 3. What's the date?

What move should have raised a flag before this got shared?

A photo appears to show a genuine moment of one stranger helping another on the street. The caption leans hard into the emotion. But digging deeper, it turns out to be a staged shot: paid actors performing a heartwarming scene for an advertising campaign.

Search for who took it, and for what purpose
A photo of someone helping a stranger is always genuine
If it shows a real physical action, it must be true

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: Search for who took it, and for what purpose

Scenes performed by actors can look completely authentic. The move: search for the origin. Who posted it first? Is it tied to a production, a film, a campaign? That connection is often findable somewhere if you look, and here it leads straight to an advertising shoot.

Related reflex(es): 1. Who is speaking? · 2. What's the source?

What's the main trap here?

An image shows a futuristic city with impossibly tall buildings stretching into the sky. It is clearly AI-generated. But the caption claims: “A revolutionary architecture project, officially approved by the city.” The post has been shared by several local accounts.

A caption can manufacture credibility on its own
If a city approves something, it must be real
A futuristic-looking image always represents a real project

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: A caption can manufacture credibility on its own

Even an image that is obviously AI-generated can get turned into “news” if the caption sounds credible enough: the false stamp of legitimacy comes from the words, not the picture. The move: search for the source. Did the city actually approve this? Is there an official statement, a real announcement anywhere? A caption is not proof of anything on its own.

Related reflex(es): 2. What's the source? · 5. Who else is saying it?

What's the final piece of wisdom here?

A photo captures a raw, extraordinary human moment: a child caught in a sandstorm in the desert, found and comforted by someone. The image is striking. A search turns up no official source and no documented story, just the photo, circulating on its own. But a moment like this could genuinely have happened.

You can't decide: no source either way, so keep looking
If something looks this extraordinary, it must be true
No source means it's automatically fake

See the answer and the explanation

The right answer: You can't decide: no source either way, so keep looking

Not every unsourced image is fake. Reality genuinely produces moments that look almost too perfect to be real, so this one could be authentic, or it could be composited, and nothing available settles it. The real skill here: keep searching actively, admit when you don't know, and never claim certainty without something to back it up.

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