On Tuesday morning, a container ship lost power and collided with Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, with the bridge collapsing completely. Following the incident, various conspiracy theories emerged online, with some suggesting a connection to predictions made in the animated TV show "The Simpsons."
"The Simpsons" has often been used by conspiracy theorists in the aftermath of major events and hazards, with claims that the show made similar predictions. While the predictions have most of the time been proved incorrect, at times there have been close similarities with the original event and the show's storyline. However, this time also the claim appears to be false and seems to be baseless.
Baltimore Key Bridge Collapse Conspiracy Theory
Numerous posts on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, shared an image from a previous episode of the TV show "The Simpsons", although the specific episode was not identified.
One of these posts, shared by user @NoContextHumans, garnered significant attention, receiving over 30 million views and 180,000 likes at the time of writing.
However, the image in question has been confirmed to be entirely generated by artificial intelligence. After conducting several reverse-image searches, no evidence of the image was found on the internet prior to the collapse of the Baltimore bridge.
Moreover, when the image was scanned using AI-detection software Hive, it registered a 100% likelihood of AI-generation.
Also, trained eyes have noted distinct indicators of AI-generation within the image. One such detail is the portrayal of Lisa Simpson with an apparent 10 hair spikes, whereas, on the original show, she consistently has only eight.
Several Conspiracy Theories
As highlighted by The Quint World, flaws in the character design of the AI-generated image of Homer Simpson are apparent.
Particularly, the zig-zags of his hair are noticeably narrower compared to their depiction in the original show.
To put it in simple words, due to the absence of any previous records of this image on the internet before the Baltimore bridge collapse, the confirmation from AI-detection software indicating the image as 100% AI-generated, and the observable signs of AI-generation such as the inaccuracies in Lisa Simpson's hair spikes, this claim is completely false.
This is just one of the several conspiracy theories doing the rounds around the Key Bridge Collapse in Baltimore.
