Was the Eiffel Tower on fire in January 2024? No, that's not true: Live images of the Paris landmark showed the Eiffel Tower was never on fire and remains at the time of writing in normal condition. The video of a burning Eiffel Tower circulating on social media is the product of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The claim appeared on TikTok (archived here) where it was published by @kaneti2 on January 16, 2024. The video shows the Eiffel Tower burning, with the caption, translated from Japanese to English by Lead Stories Staff, reading:
Is this news real? Eiffel Tower currently going through a fire
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Jan 26 00:53:04 2024 UTC)
Live feeds (archived here and here) of the Eiffel Tower from January 16, 2024, showed that it was not on fire and the official X (formerly Twitter) account (archived here) for the Eiffel Tower posted photos on January 19, 2024, showing the tower in its normal condition covered in snow, with images taken from an upper deck, and another showing a stairwell inside the tower.
Versions of the fire video that do not identify it as the product of generative Artificial Intelligence or as fake video are misleading. Many users, including this creator identified as @2_mrow_z7 (archived here), who has since deleted his video, admitted that the Eiffel Tower fire video was AI-generated. The user says he also used AI to create an image of the Louvre museum burning, no longer available but archived here, and included a disclaimer in the caption that discloses the user's usage of AI.
