Startling Images of Flooded Disney World… No, It’s AI
PLUS: Russians Push Baseless Claim About Harris and Cocaine; An Unappetizing False Claim About McDonald’s
Welcome to Reality Check, your inside look at how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
Images of extreme flooding at Disney World are AI-generated
Pro-Kremlin media use AI to claim Harris has a cocaine problem
Unhappy Meal: McDonald’s falsely linked to human remains
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Eric Effron, Sofia Rubinson, and McKenzie Sadeghi.
1. Waterworld? Russian State Media Spreads AI-Generated Images of Hurricane Flooding at Disney World

Did Disney World turn into a water park overnight? That’s what the Russians would like you to believe.
What happened: The morning after Hurricane Milton hit central Florida on Oct. 10, flooding local towns with fierce winds and torrential rain, startling images of Walt Disney World submerged under water began circulating online. However, the images are AI-generated.
A closer look: The earliest example of the claim that NewsGuard found was posted at 3:40 a.m. on Oct. 10 by @BoomBoxBro_, an X account created in June 2024 that does not list a biography and has only published this single post. The post, which included all three images, received more than 36,000 views in 12 hours and contained the caption: “Hurricane Milton has flooded Disney World in Orlando Very sad. #Hurricane Milton #DisneyWorld #Florida.”
From there, sources that often spread Russian disinformation shared the images, portraying extreme damage to an iconic American tourist attraction, in an apparent attempt to amplify the chaos of the storm.
For example, in an Oct. 10 Telegram post, Russian state-owned news agency RIA (NewsGuard Trust Score: 12.5/100) shared the images with the caption, “Social media users post photos of the flooding of Disneyland in Florida as the result of Hurricane Milton.” The post received more than 520,000 views.
Actually: While Disney did experience minor flooding, it was nothing like the damage shown in the fake images.
NewsGuard ran the images through AI detector TrueMedia, which found substantial evidence that all three were created using an AI image generator.
One image of the Cinderella Castle at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom theme park featured signs of AI generation with misshapen steeples and a crooked window. It also is missing the statue of Disney’s founder, Walt Disney, that has stood in front of the castle since 1993.
Two images show a gate with missing bars, an unidentifiable building with a warped exterior, and tree branches with unnatural-looking leaves.
Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this false narrative here.
Context: The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which monitors extremism and propaganda, told The Guardian (Trust Score: 100/100) in October 2024 that sharing manipulated imagery of natural disasters and other crises is a mainstay of Russian disinformation strategy to “sow chaos and spread misinformation for their own gain.”
Announcing Free 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center
NewsGuard’s team of analysts is keeping you up to date as we cover misinformation surrounding this year’s U.S. presidential election.
Starting today, for the three weeks leading up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election and for at least the three weeks following Election Day, NewsGuard will make available its real-time descriptions and debunks of key election misinformation narratives to the public at no charge. This includes all 2024 U.S. election-related Misinformation Fingerprints published during this designated time frame.
You will receive links to the latest misinformation claims we’ve identified right here in Reality Check. You can also visit NewsGuard’s 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center for detailed debunks of each claim. Click the link to see an initial selection of false narratives about the 2024 U.S. election that NewsGuard has identified and debunked since Sept. 1, 2024.
2. Pro-Kremlin Outlets Baselessly Accuse Harris of Cocaine Abuse
What happened: Pro-Kremlin sources are citing an AI-generated video to claim that Vice President Kamala Harris has struggled with a cocaine addiction and was once admitted to rehab — the latest in a series of Russian disinformation efforts increasingly targeting the Democratic campaign.
You can watch the video here:
A closer look: This narrative appears to have originated from an Oct. 2, 2024, X post by “James Bolden,” a self-described “independent journalist” in Colorado.
The post included a video of a supposed former Harris staffer, whose face is blurred, claiming that Harris struggled with drug addiction for years and was admitted to a rehab facility in June 2021.
Actually: There are multiple signs that the claim is bogus.
“James Bolden,” the supposed journalist behind the “investigation,” appears to be an AI-generated persona. A NewsGuard search did not identify any journalists by that name, and multiple AI detection tools found “substantial evidence” that the profile photo for “James Bolden” and the audio of his voiceover were AI-generated.
The video of the man claiming to be a former Harris staffer was also digitally manipulated, Rijul Gupta, founder and CEO of deepfake detection tool Deep Media, told NewsGuard in October 2024.
Indeed, the false narrative resembles the handiwork of John Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff who fled to Russia as a fugitive in 2016. Disinformation campaigns from Dougan typically involve a staged “first-person testimony” from a fictitious persona who claims to have witnessed some outrageous act of corruption by politicians.
Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this false narrative here.
Throwback: As further “evidence,” the supposed former Harris staffer claimed that the small plastic bag of cocaine found near the entrance to the West Wing in July 2023 was delivered for Harris.
However, no suspect has been identified, according to a July 13, 2024, statement from the U.S. Secret Service.
At the time, conservatives baselessly claimed the cocaine belonged to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Where it spread: The claim was picked up by pro-Kremlin sites including Pravda-en (Trust Score: 7.5/100) and Australian National Review (Trust Score: 7.5/100), and generated hundreds of thousands of views on Telegram.
The claim also spread in Russian and English on Russian social network VK, Telegram, Gettr, video sharing platform Rumble, and on X, with widespread promotion from bot-like accounts.
By the numbers: From Oct. 2 to Oct. 7, 2024, there were 49,000 posts and articles jointly mentioning “Harris” and “cocaine,” a 1,439 percent increase from the previous five-day period, according to a social media analytics tool.
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3. Brand Victims of the Week: Ads for Saks Fifth Avenue, Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Live Nation, and Others Fund False Claim that mRNA Vaccines Cause Cancer
In this Reality Check feature, NewsGuard identifies global brands that support the spread of misinformation by unintentionally funneling programmatic advertising dollars to sites that repeatedly peddle false claims. Unless advertisers use inclusion or exclusion lists to place their programmatic ads, these ads will appear on websites regardless of their trustworthiness.
This week: A NewsGuard analyst based in the U.S. was shown programmatic ads for Saks Fifth Avenue, Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Live Nation, and The New School on an October 2024 article published by Principia-Scientific.com (Trust Score: 20/100). The article falsely claimed that there is a “substantial risk” of developing cancer from mRNA vaccines.
Representatives for Saks Fifth Avenue, Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Live Nation, and The New School did not respond to NewsGuard’s emailed requests for comment.
(Disclosure: NewsGuard is among the companies that license data that enables advertisers only to advertise on generally reliable, brand-suitable news sites.)
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
4. One More Thing … Not Lovin’ It: Conspiracy Theorists Claim FBI Found Human Remains at a McDonald’s Meat Supplier

What happened: Conspiracy-oriented accounts are distorting an old news broadcast to falsely claim that FBI agents uncovered human remains at a meat processing plant that supplies the McDonald’s restaurant chain, alleging that it provides evidence the fast-food giant serves human meat.
Context: Claims that McDonald’s hamburgers are made from human meat have circulated since at least 2014. But now conspiracy theorists are citing a real news video to falsely support the claim.
A closer look: The news report being cited dates to 2013 and described an FBI raid of a warehouse near Detroit that uncovered illegal human body parts.
The broadcast was published by a legitimate local station, 7 News Detroit (Trust Score: 95/100) on Dec. 13, 2013, and was subsequently posted on YouTube. You can watch the clip here:
Although the video did not mention McDonald’s, conspiracy theorists shared it with misleading captions that falsely linked the two.
X user @Florenpatriotaq, who regularly posts conspiracy content, posted the clip on Sept. 27, 2024, with the caption, “The FBI finds remains of people at McDonald’s meat supplier, the truth is coming to light on television.” The post received more than 1.7 million views.
TikTok user @cadillac_chronicles714 posted the clip on Sept. 27, 2024, with the caption imposed on the video, “FBI finds human remains at a McDonald’s meat supplier.” The post garnered more than 750,000 views on TikTok and was subsequently posted with the hoax caption multiple times on X.
Actually: As is evident in the news clip, the FBI raid was not on a McDonald’s meat supplier but on a company called International Biological Inc.
Michigan-based International Biological sold human body parts to medical and research facilities, and was under investigation by the FBI in 2013 on suspicion that it obtained and sold human remains illegally.
In January 2018, the company’s former president was convicted for selling disease-riddled body parts to unsuspecting buyers.
Neither court records nor the 2013 news report suggested that the company sold body parts to McDonald’s or any other food business.
Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this false narrative here.
If you see something, say something
If you see or hear something that you think may be provably false, please alert NewsGuard via realitycheck@newsguardtech.com and we'll do our best to get to the bottom of it. Note: Tips should not include content that you simply disagree with, however strongly.
Fake Local News Sites Tracker: 1,283 Sites and Counting
In June 2024, NewsGuard reported that so-called pink slime websites — sites posing as independent news outlets but secretly funded by partisan groups — now outnumber daily newspapers in the U.S. Below, we track the spread of pink slime websites, as compared to Northwestern Local News Initiative’s count of daily newspapers. (Northwestern’s tracker was last updated in December 2023.)
Reality Check is produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.