Lack of verified information and rapidly advanced AI tools make it difficult to separate fact from fiction on US attack

Minutes after Donald Trump announced a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela early on Saturday morning, false and misleading AI-generated images began flooding social media. There were fake photos of Nicolás Maduro being escorted off a plane by US law enforcement agents, images of jubilant Venezuelans pouring into the streets of Caracas and videos of missiles raining down on the city – all fake.

The fabricated content intermixed with real videos and photos of US aircraft flying over the Venezuelan capital and explosions lighting up the dark sky. A lack of verified information about the raid coupled with AI tools’ rapidly advancing capabilities made discerning fact from fiction about the incursion on Caracas difficult.

The novelty of eating at a diner owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off in just a few months

Less than six months since it opened, Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner has the feel of a ghost town. Gone is the Optimus robot serving popcorn, gone are the carnivore-diet-inspired “Epic Bacon” strips, gone are the hours-long, hundred-person lines wrapped around the block. Even the restaurant’s all-star chef, Eric Greenspan, is gone. The Hollywood burger-and-fries shop seems like a shell of the bustling eatery it was when it opened in late July.

On a balmy Friday afternoon in December, the parking lot for Tesla car charging was, at best, half full. Inside what the company describes as a “retro-futuristic” diner, a handful of people trickled in, ordering burgers and hotdogs or asking for merch. The upstairs deck, AKA “Skypad”, was vacant except for a pair of employees stringing holiday lights. More staff was busy at work, buffing fingerprints off the chrome walls and taking out the trash, than there were customers. The diner was spotless.