A photo purporting to show an explosion near the Pentagon sent the US stock market down $500 billion on Monday, but it quickly recovered after the fake was discovered, Insider and Politico reported.

pentagonPhoto: Editorial Shutterstock / Profimedia Images

The image shows a large cloud of black smoke near what several users with verified Twitter accounts said was an area near the Pentagon.

Although this is disputed, some US newspapers claim that the image was originally posted by OSINTdefender, a Twitter account that describes itself as an “open source intelligence monitor”.

OSINTdefender later removed the disputed post, and another account that shared the image claimed to be owned by the Bloomberg news agency. That account, called @BloombergFeed, has since been suspended by Twitter.

The platform, officially acquired by Elon Musk at the end of October last year, was widely criticized in the American press because of this incident, because the account imitating the page of the Bloomberg agency had a “blue tick” that should have certified that it was a verified source. .

Russian propaganda also announced an explosion in the Pentagon

The photo was re-shared by numerous Twitter accounts, including Russia Today, a Russian state broadcaster that has more than 3 million followers on the social network.

RT’s Twitter page cannot be viewed in the European Union, which has banned Moscow’s propaganda channel in the EU since February 27 last year, along with Sputnik. But RT can be followed on Twitter in the US and other countries that have not taken such measures.

However, the Arlington Fire Department, where the Pentagon is located, denied any explosion near the building that houses the US military leadership, adding that there was no danger to the public.

The rapid spread of the image on social media caused a “hiccup” in the US stock market, which lost $500 billion in market capitalization before authorities debunked reports of the alleged incident near the Pentagon.

It’s unclear how this image was created or if artificial intelligence was used to create it, but several elements seem to suggest so.

For example, there are several differences between the building seen in the Twitter image and the real one, which can be more easily explained by the fact that it was generated by artificial intelligence rather than digitally processed from a real photo.