Dea dly floods tore through the Nepal-Tibet border in August 2026, killing more than 1,200 people and destroying thousands of buildings. But a visual comparison that purports to show a before-and-after comparison of a flood ravaged town is AI-generated. The buildings shown in the circulating images do not match authentic satellite imagery, while OpenAI's detection tool flagged it was made with the tech giant's AI model.
"Nepal -- once a land of lush green hills, crystal-clear rivers and vibrant beauty. But devastating floods and natural disasters have instantly transformed that familiar landscape. Everywhere, there is nothing but wreckage, mud, and human helplessness," reads part of a Bengali-language Facebook post shared on August 27.
The graphic shows an image labelled "before" depicting a river flanked by colourful houses, alongside another labelled "after" showing a brown river running through a mud-covered town.
The images circulated after a gigantic wave of icy debris triggered by a glacial collapse ravaged down the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26, burying homes, smashing bridges and sweeping away vehicles ( archived link).
A week after deadly flash floods swept through villages and homes in Nepal's Himalayan region, rescue times have recovered more than 1,200 bodies while nearly 4,800 people remain missing ( archived link).
Similar posts with the images surfaced elsewhere on Facebook and in other languages, including English, French and Slovak, with some posts claiming they show Timure -- one of the towns in Trishuli Valley hit by the flash floods ( archived link).
According to an AFP analysis of data from Europe's Copernicus observatory, more than 2,500 buildings were destroyed in the valley, including over 80 percent of buildings in Timure and the surrounding area.
But the circulating images are not authentic photographs of the flood's aftermath.
OpenAI's image verification tool detected an invisible Google SynthID watermark in the images, indicating they were using Google's AI tools (archived here and here).
The watermarks are designed to withstand alterations such as cropping and filtering.
The circulating images also do not match the layout of Timure.
According to handout satellite images of the town taken before and after the disaster released by Vantor on August 28 and distributed by AFP, houses in the town are concentrated on one side of the river -- not as evenly spread as those seen in the circulating image.
The circulating images also contain visual inconsistencies that further indicate fabrication.
The bridges seen in the "after" image appear much further apart than those in the "before" image. The bridge upstream in the "after" image is also much further from a protrusion along the riverbank than in the "before" picture.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the Nepal- Tibet floods.