OceanGate’s Titan sub (OceanGate Expeditions/PA)

Images claiming to show ‘Titan debris’ are fake

By Abi Jackson, PA
13:24 - June 29, 2023

Posts claiming to show the Titan submersible wreckage and debris on the sea floor have been circulating on social media. One Twitter user posted four images along with the caption: “Here the images of Titan, Debris field.”

The tweet was posted on June 22, hours after officials announced a debris field had been found in the search area for the missing Titan. The crew of five is believed to have died in a suspected “catastrophic implosion” shortly after they began their descent.

Titan, owned by exploration company OceanGate, lost contact less than two hours into a dive to view the Titanic shipwreck site off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada on June 18. A massive global search and rescue mission followed.

Evaluation: False

There is no evidence that these images are of wreckage and debris from the Titan.

Evidence suggests the first three images are AI-generated. The fourth image was taken in 2004 and shows debris, including passenger objects, from the Titanic ocean liner which was wrecked in 1912.

The facts

Old Titanic photo

The fourth image – showing a pair of boots and other items scattered on the seabed – is easy to locate online via a reverse image search. It was taken during an expedition of the Titanic wreckage in 2004, led by marine explorer Robert Ballard.

The photo was distributed by US news agency Associated Press in 2012 when the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking was marked. A number of media outlets featured the photo at the time, including this Mail Online article. The photo can also be found on image library Alamy.

Prof Ballard, who discovered the resting place of the Titanic in 1985, is professor of oceanography at the Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island – which AP and Alamy credit as the source of the image.

Visual inconsistencies

The other three images contain multiple clues suggesting they are AI-generated rather than showing legitimate Titan debris.

In the first image, the light reflecting on the surface of the water can be seen. In reality this would be impossible since the area of the North Atlantic seabed where the debris was found is around 12,500ft deep, in what scientists call the “midnight zone”.

Barely any light reaches these depths, meaning conditions are extremely dark. While underwater photography with specialist equipment is possible that far beneath the sea, any images would not appear as brightly lit and clear as what is being claimed.

The objects in the first three images also appear to have been underwater for a considerable time, rather than less than a week, with what could be coral or barnacles growing on them.

Titanic tourist vessel missing
The Titan sub (OceanGate/PA)

Also, the images do not match photos of the Titan before it imploded, nor how the US Coast Guard had described the debris it had located. At a press conference in Boston on June 22, the US Coast Guard said five “major pieces” of debris from the submersible have been recovered – including part of the pressure chamber, the nose cone, the front-end bell and the aft-end bell.

Why have official organisations not shared the images?

If images of any Titan debris had been released, they would almost certainly have been shared by reliable news outlets and have originated from a source at the scene such as the US Coast Guard.

Instead, these images appeared only to have been circulating via social media accounts already associated with false and fake posts. One of the first to share the AI-generated images was a Twitter user called ‘Prince of Deepfakes (parody)’.

Links

Tweet with alleged ‘Titan debris field images’ (archived)

Reverse Google image search (archived)

Mail Online story with original Titanic photo (archived)

Titanic debris photos on AP images (archived)

Titanic debris photo on Alamy (archived)

News story from June 22 press conference (archived)

Prof Robert Ballard biography (archived)

‘Prince of Deepfakes (parody)’ tweet (archived)

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