What was claimed
An image shows a hospital destroyed by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica.
Our verdict
The image is fake and was very likely made using AI. Real images of the hospital do not match the scene shared online.
Image shared with claims it shows Jamaican hospital destroyed by Hurricane Melissa is fake
An image widely shared on social media with claims it shows a hospital in Jamaica destroyed by Hurricane Melissa isn’t real.
Analysis by Full Fact reveals the picture was likely made using artificial intelligence (AI).
The image, shared across Facebook, Instagram and X, appears to show the roof of a building torn away, with some captions naming the building as the Black River Hospital in Jamaica.
When Full Fact put the picture through Google reverse image search, it was flagged as having been “made with Google AI”.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that the image contained a SynthID watermark, which means Google AI has been used to process, edit or create the image.
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SynthID is a digital watermark that is undetectable with the human eye, but is embedded into content made with several Google AI products. The watermark remains detectable despite any changes made to the quality or size of the picture.
We’ve previously written about other images that were identified as “made with Google AI”. A Google spokesperson previously told us (in relation to a picture supposedly showing the aftermath of the LA fires) that a SynthID watermark detected in the image meant it had been “generated or modified with AI”, though they said it was “not possible to confirm how or to what degree AI was used to generate or modify the image”.
We’ve not seen any other evidence to suggest that the image supposedly showing a destroyed hospital in Jamaica is real.
While it’s true that Black River Hospital was damaged as a result of Hurricane Melissa, satellite images of the real hospital show that its layout and the surrounding geography differs from the image being shared online.
Hurricane Melissa reportedly made landfall in New Hope, southwestern Jamaica at around 12 noon local time on Tuesday 28 October—around 5pm UK time.
The earliest version of the image Full Fact could find with this image comes from an account whose biography states: “Real disasters. AI visuals”.
Before sharing an image that you see on social media, it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine, and whether the source is reliable. Our guides to spotting AI-generated content can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the image is fake and has likely been created with AI.