Fake Images of Fire Halos over Chattanooga go Viral on Social Media

By Mason Edwards, the Chattanooga Times Free Press

Over the past two weeks, a series of five images tagged in Chattanooga ignited the curiosity of tens-of-thousands of social media users, leading to hundreds of thousands of likes, comments and reshares.

The photos in question appear to show circular cloud rings, sometimes aflame, floating atop a wooded mountain range. Most reactions to the images, spread across multiple accounts that shared them, believed the images were real, quoted scripture, or made tongue-in-cheek references to Sonic the Hedgehog, Marvel movies, Johnny Cash and aliens. On Google Trends, searches for “portals in Chattanooga TN” skyrocketed starting on Sunday, Aug. 18, and then didn’t fall back down until Saturday, Aug. 24.

A few accounts attempted to explain the phenomenon, and others towards the bottom of the comment sections warned against the dangers of AI generated images.

The likely source of the viral images goes by the handle @incognitogamingtv on social media. The account posted 35 other fake images of different portal-type images in the same background, all also tagged in Chattanooga, and they post AI-generated images of unexplainable phenomena. The account collected pictures of fake portals in Miami, Ohio and Switzerland. Other videos include poltergeists singing a children’s show theme song, giant UFOs visiting Chicago, an angel riding a powerline in Texas and more unexplainable phenomena.

As the Chattanooga portals spread across Facebook in the Southeast, two meteorologists from North Carolina posted copies of the images to their accounts, with overlaid text reading “FAKE. THIS IS PHOTOSHOP.”

Meteorologist Shea Gibson discredited the images on Facebook after receiving numerous tags from people on reshares of the fake portals.

“They are cleary fake,” Gibson said. “We do not see them naturally occur in our science.”

As an employee of WeatherFlow-Tempest for 13 years, Gibson said fake, photoshopped or AI-generated images of unnatural weather phenomena causes problems not only for his profession, but also for the public.

“We have folks out there telling EM responders about false weather events, and people have actually canceled chemo treatment appointments because of false snow storms in the winter,” Gibson said.

He noticed a lot of misinformation comes from Facebook groups, which carefully vet their members to only allow people who believe in the misinformation.

“If we go in and debate any of the misguided posts, even if professionally, we become instant targets and are usually removed/banned,” Gibson said.

He recommended people trust national, official sources like the NHC and National Weather Services offices in order to ensure they get timely, accurate information.

As the powers of artificial intelligence grow, determining the authenticity of images online will become harder. For over 30 years, educators have discussed ways to help people navigate online content, according to University of Tennessee at Chattanooga professor Rik Hunter, Ph.d.

Hunter serves as the Director of English Graduate Studies at UTC. He currently teaches about digital cultures and public rhetoric, and he studied Art and Design and English as an undergraduate. He explained that consumers of social media content need to approach everything with a “healthy skepticism.”

“You have to ask questions about who the social media influencers is, for example, and what their motivations might be,” Hunter said. “But also, we need to keep up with the ways new technologies like AI allow people to produce things that look and sound real but aren’t.”

Sometimes, users post manipulated videos to tell a joke, but the context becomes lost as the joke is reshared over the internet. Other times, as Hunter pointed out, bad actors intend to deceive people for political gain, like with the fake Biden robocalls.

“We’re playing catch-up with our laws, and also how we, as individuals, critically assess digital media,” Hunter explained.

When resharing, think about the motivations of the original author, and how their goals might change as the information loses or gains context. In the case of the mysterious portals, people reshared the images as a joke until that original sight was lost, leading to some members of the community believing they were real.