Several Facebook (FB) Reels are claiming to show the raging wildfires engulfing parts of Los Angeles (L.A.), California in the United States (U.S.) this month. VERA Files Fact Check has flagged a number that are fake and generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
At least three of these short videos were published by Filipino users and an FB page on Jan. 10. One of the posts was captioned:
“Wildfires in Los Angeles, particularly the Palisades Fire, have caused widespread devastation since January 7, 2025. This fire has scorched nearly 20,000 acres and destroyed approximately 5,000 structures, marking it as one of the deadliest in the city’s history with at least 10 fatalities reported.”
It was accompanied with a compilation of five clips allegedly showing land and aerial footage of hills and neighborhoods in L.A. burning down. Two of the videos showed the Hollywood sign, an iconic California landmark, one of them supposedly engulfed by flames from the wildfires in the area.
These videos were created with AI. VERA Files Fact Check sought the help of AI detection experts from the Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) of the India-based Misinformation Combat Alliance to verify these videos.
The DAU said in its assessment that the short clips shown in the video compilation were found to be “generated with the help of AI” after they ran the visuals through AI image detectors “Is it AI?” and “AI or Not.”
Results from tools used by the DAU show that all of the clips in the video compilation were “likely” to “highly likely” generated using AI.
The DAU added: “The siren noise that comes up in the beginning (of the video) is a very common piece of audio that is present all over the internet, so it is plausible it was added to the video track to create a sense of foreboding.”
Using a “specialized classifier” of AI detection tool Hive AI, the DAU found that the video of the burning Hollywood sign was also likely created using AI. Based on the results from the tool, they said AI image generators like Flux are probably most responsible for creating the visual.
Hive AI result given by DAU showed that there is a high probability that the video of the Hollywood sign burning was made using an image generation tool.
The official FB page of the Hollywood Sign also issued a statement on Jan. 10 debunking claims that the famous landmark burned down and said the sign “continues to stand tall.”
A webcam recording on the Hollywood sign taken on Jan. 12 – two days after the fake posts were published – showed the landmark unblemished by the raging wildfires.
More, a visual error can also be seen in one of the AI-generated videos where it showed the Hollywood sign fading away as firefighting aircraft poured water to quench the flames.
These videos continue to spread like wildfire on local social media spaces amid the fires in the California neighborhoods of Palisades, Eaton and Hurst.
FB page Hiwaga (created on April 5, 2021) and two FB users published the fake Reels, collectively garnering over 139,700 reactions, 18,900 comments, 58,400 shares and 12.6 million views.