Social media users worldwide have been fooled by an AI-generated image that appears to show a massive fire engulfing a warehouse for Chinese e-commerce giant Temu. The social media user who created the image told AFP it was intended as a joke, and no official reports indicate such an incident happened as of January 7, 2025.
"Good thing I'm still at the add-to-cart stage," read Tagalog-language text overlaid on the image shared on Facebook on December 30, 2024.
It appears to show a big fire at a warehouse belonging to Temu, a shopping app owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings that has sucked in consumers across the world with its low prices (archived link).
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The image spread online around the world, including in posts in English, Korean, Thai and French, with many social media users appearing to believe it showed a real inferno.
"Oh no what happens to my purchases?" one commented.
"Gosh I buy most of my household items here," another wrote.
AI-generated
The picture features several clues that it was created with artificial intelligence, including a "Grok" watermark in the bottom right corner, which refers to the generative AI chatbot created by Elon Musk's company xAI.Other defects include the brand name misspelled as "Tehu" -- instead of "Temu" -- on the side of the warehouse and the inaccurate depiction of the company's official logo (archived link).
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While there is no foolproof method to spot AI-generated media, identifying watermarks and visual inconsistencies can help, as errors still occur despite the meteoric progress in generative AI.
'Simply a joke'
Reverse image searches on Google found an earlier upload of the image on the X account @DocAtCDI, who shared it with a humour-laden caption (archived link).It read: "A 57,000 square foot Temu warehouse in China went up in flames today. The total loss of inventory has been estimated to be as high as $56.19 USD."
The user confirmed to AFP on January 4 that they made the photo using AI.
"There is a watermark that was left in on the bottom right to make sure people would know it was AI generated, it was simply a joke," they said.
The same account has previously posted AI-generated images of a burning Temu building.
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Further keyword searches on X uncovered an earlier post with a similar caption but a different AI-generated image of a burning Temu warehouse, as indicated by the appearance of a Grok watermark (archived link).
Fact-checking organisation Snopes noted that Irish satirical channel The Waterford Whispers News previously shared a similar version of the joke about a Temu warehouse fire in a video uploaded on September 3, 2024 (archived here and here).
AFP found no official reports of a Temu warehouse catching fire, as of January 7.
