People Think AI Images of Hollywood Sign Burning Are Real

There’s a video going viral this week of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles with a wildfire raging behind it, letters glowing in the blaze. It’s a powerful scene, up there with the burning McDonald’s sign in imagery that’s come out of this week’s devastating fires spreading across LA. 

I've seen several people sharing this same video with shades of shock and heartbreak. But it’s AI-generated. When it was posted, according to a Community Note on one of the posts, a look at the Hollywood sign livestreams showed the sign was fine; as of writing, the feeds are down, but Hollywoodsign.org, a website that runs a live webcam pointed at the sign, told fact-checking site Snopes "Griffith Park is temporarily closed as a safety precaution, but the Sign itself is not affected and is secure — and the cameras will slowly but surely come back up."