It’s wildfire season, and blazes were sweeping through Europe with particularly serious outbreaks ongoing in France and Spain. As the fires quickly escalated to burn through hundreds of thousands of hectares, misinformation began to appear on social media.
Fake content and incorrect information can make it harder to visualise the real impact of this fire season. To counter this, we created an interactive map showing all the fires burning in Europe.
Meanwhile, members of Eurovision News Spotlight have been fact-checking the false claims, AI-generated content and old images circulating as the wildfires were taking hold.
Explore our interactive map showing ongoing fires and areas that have been burnt since the beginning of 2026. Map updates every 24 hours.
As news about the fires began filtering out, false claims and fake images began to appear. One similar phenomenon appearing across countries was AI-generated videos and photos of firefighters rescuing wild animals from the flames.
It's not the rescue of a fox and her cub, it's a video created with artificial intelligence — VerificaRTVE
Radio France’s Valentine Joubin, writing for franceinfo’s Vrai ou Faux, wrote about the proliferation of AI-generated images showing rescues of foxes, boar piglets, and fawns, some of them being cradled by firefighters.
Animal behaviour specialists pointed out that wild animals typically...
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