A clip said to show massive flooding in the Amazonian city hosting the UN climate summit is just one widely shared example of how disinformation, cheaply created with artificial intelligence (AI) and circulating on social media, is influencing perceptions of COP30.
A report released yesterday by the Coalition Against Climate Disinformation (CAAD) found that despite increasing support for policies to address climate change, the persistence of online falsehoods, supercharged by AI, help sustain an undercurrent of hostility toward science.
CAAD and the Observatory for Information Integrity highlighted a 267 percent surge, or more than 14,000 examples, of COP-related disinformation from July to September.
Photo: Reuters
Several videos implied Belem would not be fit to host the key conference, but one was filmed in Tbilisi, Georgia, while another recycled footage from two years ago.
In the video showing the city purportedly under water, the observatory said: “The reporter doesn’t exist, the people don’t exist, the flood doesn’t exist, and the city doesn’t exist.”
TikTok has not removed the video — which does not disclose its use of AI — despite observatory researchers flagging it to the platform.
It is reflective of a larger trend of AI-tainted climate content spread throughout the year.
Earlier this year, Agence France-Presse investigated a document claimed to have been written by Elon Musk’s Grok 3 AI. It wrongfully dismissed the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate models.
Research shows that more than 80 percent of people want stronger climate action, and 69 percent say they would contribute 1 percent of their monthly income to support it.
Yet, both UN Environment Assembly attendees and the general public vastly underestimate that willingness to mobilize.
“This is the impact of climate disinformation,” CAAD said. “Big Carbon’s spending and Big Tech’s algorithms are preventing us from seeing and hearing one another online. Instead, we’re exposed to one lie after another.”
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