How to spot · FIND THE SOURCE

Who posted it first? Tracing a picture to its source

How a picture looks can only ever give you a hunch. Where it came from can give you an answer. Almost every item in our game was settled this way: someone found the first copy and the person who made it.

Work backwards

The account that showed you the picture is rarely where it started. Look at what it says: is it a repost, a screenshot, a quote of someone else? Follow each step back. Each hop usually loses a bit of the original caption, so the earliest copy is the one that tells you most.

Four questions for the first account

• Could they have been there? A photographer who lives in the town, or a news agency with staff on the ground, is believable. An account that posts dramatic pictures from a different country every day is not.
• What do they usually post? Scroll back. An account full of AI art, jokes or made-up scenes has told you what this picture probably is.
• What did they say at the time? Many makers of AI pictures say so in the caption, a hashtag or their profile. That label is the first thing lost when the picture is copied.
• Is there more? A real event leaves several pictures and clips from different people and angles. A single perfect image with nothing else to support it deserves doubt.

Check the date

Old pictures are passed off as new ones far more often than AI pictures are passed off as real. Compare the date of the earliest copy with the event it is said to show. If the picture is older than the event, you are done.

Look for a second, independent source

Has a news organisation with its own reporters published it? Has the person or organisation in the picture said anything? Has a fact-checker looked at it? One confirmation from someone with no reason to play along is worth more than a thousand shares.

When you cannot find the source

Sometimes the trail goes cold. That is an answer too: it means nobody has shown the picture to be real. Say “I don’t know” and do not share it. In our game we hold back any picture whose origin we cannot prove, however obvious it looks.