Nepal flood misinformation surges as AI fakes hamper rescue efforts

Nepal has opened a complaints portal and ordered users to delete false flood content as rescue work continues. The crackdown highlights how AI-generated and recycled visuals are compounding grief and confusion after the disaster.

In Short

• Press Council portal received 101 complaints over graphic and misleading flood posts
• Several viral disaster videos were recycled from India, Alaska and elsewhere
• One fabricated flood clip on X amassed more than seven million views

Nepal is battling a surge of misinformation on social media even as rescue and relief operations continue after the devastating flash floods that hit the country. The government has ordered 72 users to remove inappropriate content in recent days as fake and AI-generated visuals spread online.

The Nepal Press Council, the country's media regulatory body, has opened a dedicated portal titled "Special Complaints on the Bhotekoshi Incident" to let the public report misinformation and graphic material linked to the disaster, The Kathmandu Post reported on Monday. The move comes as families search for missing relatives and authorities work to assess the full scale of the tragedy.

Social media platforms have been flooded with dramatic videos and images claiming to show the destruction caused by the flash floods in the Himalayan nation. While some footage is genuine, fact-checkers found that several widely shared videos and images were from disasters in other countries, recycled from earlier events, or generated or manipulated using artificial intelligence, the report said.

The spread of misleading content has made an already chaotic information environment more difficult to manage. For some users seeking views and virality, the tragedy has also become a source of profitable content, raising concerns among authorities, journalists and fact-checkers.

Nepal Press Council Chairman Umesh Shrestha said 72 social media users, most of them posting through personal accounts, had been instructed to remove inappropriate content. He said the council's portal had received 101 complaints by 5 pm on Saturday, including complaints against 67 personal accounts that had posted gruesome visuals. "Similarly, complaints have been lodged against some online news portals and their social media pages," he said, adding that mainstream media organisations had largely avoided publishing misleading information and excessively graphic visuals. "This is a positive takeaway," Shrestha said.

One widely shared video claimed to show Home Minister Sudan Gurung inside a tunnel at the disaster site helping with rescue work. The footage, however, was traced to a tunnel rescue operation in Uttarakhand in India and had originally been posted by the Fire Service Uttarakhand Police on August 14. Another video posted on X on August 27, appearing to show a catastrophic flood, drew more than seven million views. It was assessed by Hive Moderation, an AI detection tool, as 97.2 per cent likely to have been generated through artificial intelligence, while X's community notes also flagged it as fabricated.

A separate video claiming to show a bridge collapsing during the Nepal-Tibet floods was also assessed as entirely AI-generated. Nepal Fact Check debunked another video that claimed to show a glacial lake outburst flood in Rasuwa, tracing it instead to a glacial outburst flood at Columbia Glacier in Alaska in the United States. "Before and after" photographs claiming to show a settlement in Rasuwa before and after the floods were also found to be fabricated by the Australian Associated Press fact-checking unit.

Fact-checkers said the growing use of AI has added a new dimension to the longstanding problem of recycled and falsely attributed disaster footage. The government's Social Media Regulation and Management Committee, tasked with dealing with graphic content, AI-generated misinformation, fake QR codes and other forms of online deception, has also begun discussions with social media platforms, according to the Post report. The crisis has also raised concern over graphic footage showing bodies, injuries and devastated communities, often shared without warnings or consideration for victims and their families.

The flash floods, believed to have been triggered by a collapse or avalanche of ice and rock near the Nepal-Tibet border, devastated towns and villages in northern and central Nepal on August 26. Authorities said more than 900 people were killed and over 4,245 remain missing. The Bhotekoshi River carried the floodwaters downstream, sweeping away homes, vehicles, roads and bridges and damaging hydropower projects, as Nepal now struggles with both the disaster and the wave of false content around it.

With PTI Inputs

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