WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A New Zealand news Facebook page is publishing images of emergency incidents.
OUR VERDICT
False. The images have been generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
AAP FACTCHECK - A Facebook page claiming to be a legitimate New Zealand news outlet is publishing AI-generated images of fatal accidents and emergency incidents that misrepresent actual events.
The 'NZ Daily Hub' page purports to cover the "latest news, breaking news, trends, sports, lifestyles, and events from NZ", but merely reproduces stories based on reporting done by credible New Zealand media outlets.
It also adds images and videos generated using artificial intelligence (AI) that are littered with errors and misrepresent the details of the incidents.
One post claims to show an image from the scene of a fatal crash on State Highway 2, south of Auckland, on February 24.
A Google Image search reveals that the image and several others posted by the page are embedded with SynthID watermarks, indicating they were created using Google's AI image generator.
It also contains clear visual hallmarks of AI generation, such as the misspelled road name "Stahawe 2" and garbled, nonsensical text in the sub-headlines.
While NZ Police and legitimate news outlets, including the New Zealand Herald, reported on the crash, none included images of the scene.
Another post purports to show a scene where a person was found dead near a vehicle in Whataroa, north of Franz Josef, on February 25.
The image is clearly AI-generated.
The bottom headline misspells the town as "Whataro" and states the death is "Unxxplaned" and the police cars do not match the yellow and blue colours of official New Zealand police cars.
The image also invents details about the incident, showing a vehicle overturned in a shallow waterway, despite no reports that the fatality was related to a car crash.
Outlets like the NZ Herald and Stuff covered the incident, but did not include any photos from the scene.
Another post claims to show a scene where a person was seriously injured after being trapped between a truck and skip bin, in central Wellington, on March 4.
The image includes a 1News logo, but is AI-generated: a Daily Waste truck was involved, but a Wellington City Council-branded truck is depicted in the photo.
The photo places the truck in an open street despite the actual incident occurring in an alleyway along Maning Lane, as reported by Stuff and shown in Google Street View images.
Several emergency service vehicles and paramedic uniforms also have garbled wording on them, while the live news ticker along the bottom of the image is also nonsensical.
Another post claims to show a photo from the scene of a fatal motorcycle crash on Foxton Shannon Road, north of Wellington, on March 7.
The image depicts several AI hallucinations. Writing on one of the police cars reads "POLIEE", and a road sign spells "Foxton" as "Fgxton".
While RNZ and NZ Herald covered the crash, none of the reports included any photos from the scene.
The page has also posted a supposed video showing the moment a landslide occurred in Muriwai during Cyclone Gabrielle, in 2023.
"In 2023, during the devastating impact of Cyclone Gabrielle, residents of Muriwai faced terrifying landslides in the middle of the night," the caption reads.
The video appears to use AI to animate a still photograph of the landslide published by RNZ.
Videos published by credible news outlets like NZ Herald show the aftermath or aerial damage inflicted by the landslide, not the moment the slope collapsed.
AAP FactCheck has previously debunked posts published by the NZ Daily Hub.
Despite posting content focused on New Zealand and including address details for Blenheim, the page is managed from Sri Lanka.
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