A gunman killed six people in a shooting spree in Krakow's Old Town on Saturday, before being shot and detained by police. The gunman, who is also suspected of killing three family members before the attack, later died in hospital. On Monday, Poland's national prosecutor's office announced a formal investigation.
Nevertheless, much is still unknown about the details of the crime, leaving social media users to fill the information vacuum with fake images of the attacker and alleged screenshots of his online profile. DW Fact Check breaks down the developing story. Claim: A viral picture has been circulating on social media claiming to be the real image of the suspected attacker.
In the post, the image is posted with the caption, "[…] The perpetrator of the attack in Krakow is a 25-year-old Polish citizen, Polish police have reported. The death toll has reached six. (…)". But the unusual sharpness of this picture raises doubt of its authenticity.
It is difficult to imagine capturing such a clear image in a chaotic situation. DW checked the image using two different AI detectors. Hive Moderation identified it as 99.5% AI-generated, while Google's SynthID Detector confirmed that it contains a SynthID watermark, indicating that it was generated or edited using Google's AI technology.
In our research we found several versions of the suspect image circulating online, most looking very similar. We also found a number of images and videos showing the attack. Although DW cannot independently verify the footage, it shares similarities in terms of the people and background with some original images published by picture agencies.
It appears the AI-generated images may have been created using this footage as a reference. Some of the posts sharing these images have also been labeled as AI-generated. One important thing to understand is that AI cannot sharpen a blurry image with correct details or recover details that are not visible in an original photograph.
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