Reported Use and Circulation of AI-Generated Misinformation and Fake Victim Visuals After Air India 171 Crash

June 12, 2025

On June 12, 2025, the crash of Air India Flight 171 was followed by the propagation of misinformation and fake victim visuals, allegedly AI-generated. These manipulated media spread rapidly on social platforms during the investigation period, potentially deceiving aviation experts and the public alike. Expert concerns highlighted the exploitation of grief experienced by victims' families, emphasizing the need for trustworthy and safe AI practices.

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Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.676, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.1 — similarity 0.652, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.646, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: unknown-social-media-actors-exploiting-the-air-india-flight-171-disaster
Alleged developer: unknown-generative-ai-developers
Alleged harmed parties: general-public, families-of-the-victims-of-air-india-flight-171, experts-investigating-the-air-india-flight-171-crash, epistemic-integrity

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1125

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.