Palm Beach plane crash footage isn't AI-generated, despite social media claims

This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.

Footage from Palm Beach County, Florida, shows a plane nosediving into the ground at full speed, cratering the pavement, and dissolving into fire and smoke. It looks unreal. So unreal that some social media users say it's fake.

"The Video You're All Seeing From The 'Plane' Crash Was 100% Ai Generated SOMEONE IS LYING TO US !!!!!! That Was Not An Airplane," read a Nov. 1 X post sharing video of what looks like an AI detection video analysis. "Notice How The Ai Detector Only Detects Ai Generated Content From The 'Plane.'"

Other X posts also questioned the footage's veracity. But the crash happened and the video has been corroborated by legitimate news outlets.

A business jet, a Learjet 60, was headed to the Bahamas from Austin, Texas, when it crashed into a neighborhood near Cresthaven, Florida, at approximately 12:51 p.m. ET, on Nov. 1. Everyone on board died, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Nov. 1.

The authorities have not said what caused the crash, but Tom Chapman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Nov. 2 that the aircraft experienced turbulence and encountered ice. The incident is under investigation, he said at a press conference that day.

Timothy Monville, who's leading the investigation into the crash for the safety board, said the federal agency has "just begun" documenting the incident.

"We have a lot of work to do on scene," he said. "This will be a several-day process, and the biggest obstacle that we're going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway."

The crash footage has been shared by The Associated Press, CNN, CBS News and BBC. We also found its original source, Aki Kuusisto, a digital creator from West Palm Beach, who first shared the clip on Facebook.

"This was not quite what I had in mind when I installed the dash cam," Kuusisto said in the post's comments.

The X posts show screen recordings of the clip being submitted to Hive Moderation, an AI-detection tool. The recordings show the tool's analysis reporting that it detected AI-generated content in the clip. Hive Moderation is an imperfect tool and PolitiFact has used it before. However, when we introduced Kuusisto's footage to the tool, it didn't flag it as AI-generated or manipulated.

Flames rise following an aircraft incident in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Nov. 1, 2026, in this still image obtained from video. Photo by Eduin Cruz via Reuters

Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, told PolitiFact people are right to be skeptical of viral videos as AI improves. But some people have grown so distrustful of AI they're disbelieving the truth, a phenomenon known as the "liar's dividend."

"This is when people are so accustomed to being lied to, they don't know the truth when it is presented to them," Linvill said. "That is what is occurring with the video of the Palm Beach crash."

It's not surprising the crash was captured on camera considering how abundant personal recording devices are today.

But Linvill added that people should get their news from reliable sources. One of the X accounts that questioned the veracity of the plane crash footage, for example, has been amplified by bot accounts that promote narratives by Russian Storm-1516, a campaign that uses Russian and non-Russian influencers to promote false claims in the U.S. and other countries.

Our ruling

An X post said footage of Nov. 1 plane crash in Palm Beach County, Florida, "was 100%" generated with artificial intelligence

News outlets have shared the dash cam footage confirming the video's veracity. An AI expert told PolitiFact that although the video is dramatic and frightening, it is authentic.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

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