APA Fact Check: False News About Baumgartner's Death Spread on TikTok
Last week, Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner tragically died in a paragliding accident. Among the worldwide coverage, two TikTok videos with a large reach (1,2) stood out with differing versions of the events. However, the claims made there about an allegedly impaired ability to act and the location of the incident are misleading. This is not a mistake, but a calculated move.
Misinformation About the Fatal Accident of Extreme Athlete Felix Baumgartner
Assessment: The two videos in question were likely created mostly through the use of artificial intelligence, especially for the creation of the audio track. Additionally, footage is shown that has nothing to do with Baumgartner's accident. The athlete died in Porto Sant'Elpidio.
Verification: The description of the two TikTok accounts already proves that the content of the videos must be misinformation. "All is fake" (3) and "Everything is fake" can be read in the profile of the TikTok accounts (4). However, there are no hints in the description of the videos.
Both accounts feature several similar videos that follow a certain pattern. At the beginning, a headline is displayed next to the image of a prominent person. While large villas or special landscapes are seen from a bird's eye view, a monotone voice reports the supposed news. Often, misinformation and half-truths are mixed with the actual facts.
Created With the Help of AI
Lukas Görög, founder of the Academy for Artificial Intelligence and Digitalization in Vienna, has recently observed more videos of this kind on social media. In video reports created with the help of AI about current events, errors are deliberately included to generate additional reach. Engagement increases through users who want to address such errors in the comments, Görög says in response to an APA fact-check inquiry.
This approach is referred to by the expert as "news hijacking." "The goal is usually to gather followers for an account," says Görög. Such tactics are used in Russian or other propaganda. Here, users are primarily lured in through humor or so-called "light lies." When it becomes relevant, the aim is to "offer this target group specific content (first fun content, then anti-vaccination or anti-Ukraine)."
Aerial Images Are from Google Earth
The aerial images of large estates shown in the TikTok videos are from Google Earth and have nothing to do with Baumgartner's accident site. According to Italian (5) and international (6) reports, the extreme athlete crashed with his paraglider in the pool area of a holiday resort in Porto Sant'Elpidio, Italy. The estate in the first video does not have a pool. The second video is likely of an estate in Las Vegas, USA (7). Upon inquiry by APA, the "Le Mimose Family Resort" of Club del Sole confirmed the hotel grounds as the accident site. Using Google Maps (8), it can be determined that there is a pool in the hotel complex.
The claim that a woman was seriously injured while sunbathing in the pool area during the accident can be refuted by media reports. Only a hotel employee (9) is reported to have been injured. She is said to be in "good health" again.
Additionally, there is no evidence that eyewitnesses of the accident, as claimed in the second TikTok video, speculated about Felix Baumgartner's state of consciousness during the flight. No media reports or public statements from the Italian police confirm the allegation in the video.
At the beginning of the investigations, a health emergency of the extreme athlete in the air was suspected. An autopsy ruled out cardiac arrest in the air as the cause of death according to media reports (10). Written inquiries from the APA fact-check to the Italian police about the course of the accident remained unanswered.
(APA/Red)
This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.