Thomas Copeland and Kevin Nguyen
BBC Verify

We posted earlier about how the disappearance of a four-year-old child in South Australia led to AI-generated misinformation being shared online. We also looked at how to spot “AI slop” being posted on Facebook accounts.

The “Celebrity Today” account that posted AI-generated pictures of the boy also includes links to a site called USA News.

Not only are the linked stories on USA News littered with inaccuracies there are also clear indications that the text has been generated by AI, according to experts we spoke to.

Michael Wooldridge, professor of artificial intelligence at Oxford University, explained some of the AI warning signs in the USA News stories.

The repeated use of em-dashes is a well-known indicator, Wooldridge says. He adds that the “use of too many adjectives, overly flowery sentence constructions and unusual adjectives or verbs” can be a giveaway. You can see all of those in the example above.

We also noticed that some of the text in one of the “stories” is in Vietnamese. This suggests the account’s operators are feeding genuine news stories into artificial intelligence chatbots that produce Vietnamese text which is then converted into English.

The USA News site appears to feature numerous digital ads which means the site’s owners may be trying to bring in viewers through viral misinformation about high-profile stories to make money.

BBC Verify has been examining videos apparently showing Israeli troops pulling back from some of their locations in Gaza.

Merlyn Thomas has been looking at what this footage can tell us about the initial Israeli withdrawal - and what this means for Palestinians trying to return home.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Telegram/Yandex

The largest oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea is apparently still on fire following a Ukrainian drone strike at the start of the week.

Monday’s attack caused a massive blaze at the Feodosia site. That morning we were able to show how satellite images revealed the scale of the fire, almost a year to the day since it was last struck.

Verifying daylight images showed at least two fires on the north side of the city.

Pro-Ukrainian accounts on social media have been saying today that the site is still burning. However, the latest on-the-ground video we’ve seen, and people have been sharing, first appeared on Telegram yesterday afternoon. It shows one of the oil tanks on the north side of the facility burning, blackened and partially collapsed.

We know it’s the right place because the pattern on the wall, placement of lights and the tanks all match street-level images on the Russian mapping site Yandex.

While copies of the video were widely shared yesterday afternoon it may have been filmed before then. Weather reports and satellite images match conditions over Feodosia yesterday morning but also for most of Tuesday and Wednesday.

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

Thousands of displaced people have begun walking north along al-Rashid street towards Gaza City following the beginning of the ceasefire.

What they will be returning to is the widespread destruction brought about by two years of war.

According to a satellite imagery analysis released earlier this month from researchers at Oregon State University, 198,883 buildings in the Gaza Strip are thought to have been damaged since the start of the war.

Destruction of buildings can be seen across the territory, with Gaza City one of the worst-hit areas.

Researchers estimate that 74% of buildings in the Strip’s largest urban area have likely been damaged since 7 October 2023.

Since the outbreak of the war, hundreds of thousands of people have fled Gaza City.

As we reported yesterday, the first IDF withdrawal phase would effectively reverse Israeli advances made in this area over the past month.

Alison Benjamin
BBC Verify data scientist

Today we published an investigation that found more than 1,000 duplicate listings on Airbnb in London - which is one way some landlords and agents try to get round the UK capital’s restrictions on short-term lets which are aimed at protecting renters.

By law, Londoners can let out their home on Airbnb and similar sites for up to 90 days a year. Some hosts try to bypass the company’s own rules by posting parallel adverts that operate year-round.

After seeing hosts openly boast of this, I wrote software to find pairs of seemingly unique property listings that shared the same photos.

The software focused on unique photos in listings - images that showed notable decor, distinctive architecture and personal touches.

Each photo was given a unique digital fingerprint, known as a hashing. Because hashes can be compared they allow you to find copies of photographs.

After controlling for attributes like number of guests, bedrooms and rooms, the software flagged pairs of listings that shared 60% or more of their photos with each other.

This software used conservative criteria, looking for exact photo matches instead of similarity. It would miss situations where a host re-photographed their home by using different angles. It would also miss properties advertised on Airbnb’s competitors.

All told, we found almost 1,300 seemingly unique adverts that in fact shared most of their photos with another listing.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, X

Verified footage shows scenes of panic and evacuation as a powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Philippines this morning.

One verified video from the city of Davao shows people rushing out of a building. Some are seen dropping to their knees or holding onto plant pots for support.

By analysing the signs we can see in the video, including one for a pharmacy and cross-referencing them with building features, I confirmed the footage was taken from the Davao regional medical centre. I ran recency checks using internet search engines to make sure the footage is new.

A video from Agusan captures the moment the roof over what appears to be a shopping mall entrance collapses. I checked Google Maps for malls in the Agusan region and was able to match it on Google Street View with the Robinson supermarket in Butuan city.

At least one person is reported to have died in today’s earthquake. This is the second tremor to hit the Philippines this month. A quake just over a week ago killed 74 people and injured hundreds.

Kevin Nguyen
BBC Verify senior journalist

Earlier we told you about AI-generated pictures being posted online following the disappearance of a four-year-old boy in South Australia.

One of the sources of this misinformation is a Facebook account called “Celebrity Today”. We’ve seen before how pages created by content farms profit from AI slop, which I’ve previously linked to fake Holocaust images.

Content farmers deploy bot crawlers to identify trending topics. They then use a large language model AI chatbot to produce fake content and photos.

AI slop accounts like these focus on Western pop culture and interests like film and crime.

They also try to appear like they’re based in the US. Celebrity Today’s page is listed as being in New York City but its address and contact details are false.

The Facebook page’s transparency section - which can’t be edited and is found in the account’s “about” section - says the administrators of this page are primarily from Vietnam.

I contacted Meta and asked them if Celebrity Today was in violation of its rules and if it was part of its content monetisation program, meaning it could potentially be profiting from misinformation. Meta has yet to respond.

Image source, Facebook

Sherie Ryder and Kumar Malhotra
BBC Verify

Image source, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY

We’re looking at fresh images and video that emerged earlier this morning showing the aftermath of Russian strikes across Ukraine and on Kyiv in particular.

President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on Telegram that there had been more than 450 drones launched overnight as he shared an image of firefighters tackling a blaze at an apartment block in Kyiv.

We cross-referenced this with other images published by news agencies this morning and also checked the location of this building on Google Earth.

Ukrainian media have reported that a number of people were injured in Kyiv and that parts of the city are without power and water.

There are also reports of strikes elsewhere in Ukraine, including one that killed a child in Zaporizhzhia. We’re continuing to search for material to gauge the extent of last night’s attacks.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Instagram

Under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire deal, the Israeli military is required to withdraw from certain areas of the Strip to pre-agreed lines.

We've seen evidence of these withdrawals in footage posted to social media.

In one clip, posted on Instagram, we saw heavy machinery moving in convoy in a southerly direction. The footage was filmed from the Jordanian Field Hospital in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City.

This is an area that has seen considerable military activity since the Israeli military’s operation to occupy Gaza City began in August.

We've also seen footage of tanks and other military vehicles crossing from northern Gaza back into Israel. By comparing with satellite imagery we can see they are using the Western Erez crossing close to the coast.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

Police in South Australia have scaled back a search for a four-year-old boy named Gus Lamont who disappeared on Saturday 27 September.

Despite extensive reporting of the case by Australian media, AI-generated misinformation has been spreading on social media this week.

One AI-generated image circulated online that appeared to show a man carrying “Gus” into a car. It was labelled: “Is this a kidnapping case?”

BBC Verify has confirmed this image is not real and South Australia Police has told local media it was urging people to check trusted sources for accurate information.

“Police urge caution when using artificial intelligence in internet searches and recommend cross-referencing the information with trusted sources.”

The search has now shifted to a “recovery operation”, police say, adding there was “little hope for us to find Gus alive”.

How do we know it’s AI-generated?

A Facebook account called “Celebrity Today” shared this picture to its 815,000 followers and has had around 5,000 reactions and more than 2,500 shares.

I sent a selection of images from the account to Michael Wooldridge, professor of artificial intelligence at Oxford University, who pointed to the unnatural hands and limbs.

In the fake image of the boy a the top of this post the man’s forefinger is elongated and in an AI-generated picture of a woman holding a real picture of Gus - see below - she only has three fingers on her left hand.

We also found that many of the posts shared by Celebrity Today mix real photos with AI-generated images.

We’ll share more information soon about what we’ve found about the Facebook accounts and the fake news site behind this AI misinformation.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning from BBC Verify Live.

We’ve been investigating how AI-generated content helped spread misinformation around the search for a missing four-year-old boy in Australia. BBC Verify Live’s Thomas Copeland has been working on this and will be posting about what he found out.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia launched 450 drones and about 30 missiles at his country last night in what appears to be a targeted attack on its energy infrastructure. We’re working to verify images from across Ukraine to get an idea of what has been hit.

We’re continuing to monitor social media feeds to see what people inside Gaza are posting now that the Israel Defense Forces says a ceasefire is in effect. There’s full live coverage of the latest developments here.

BBC Verify’s Alison Benjamin has been working on an investigation into attempts by Airbnb hosts to get round the rules on short-term lets in London. You can read the full story here and Alison will post on this live page later about her role in the story.