NEW YORK (AP) — It took police more than a week to publicly identify Debrina Kawam, 57, as the woman who was fatally set on fire on a New York subway last month. But it only took a few hours for a false name to spread on the Internet.
In posts shared widely on social media following Kawam’s death on December 22, users claimed without evidence that the victim was a 29-year-old named “Amelia Carter.” These posts spread across all platforms, often accompanied by an image of a newborn woman that experts say may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
It is not clear who first made the claim or why. But many who shared it emphasized the immigration status of the man charged in Kawam’s death — immigration officials say he was a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally — and accused the media of refusing to name him the “beautiful young white woman”.
Nathan Walter, an associate professor at Northwestern University who studies misinformation, said the story was “manna from heaven” for anti-immigrant narratives and that it had become a “framing war” as the public sought information. which were not yet available.
“It spreads quickly because it just fits so well,” he said of misinformation about the victim’s identity. “And when something fits so well, we usually just nod along and don’t really question it.”
Footage of Kawam going up in flames spread widely online shortly after the Dec. 22 attack, sparking curiosity about her identity. But while a suspect, Sebastian Zapeta, was arrested later in the day, few details about the victim were available in the following days as authorities worked to identify her using forensics and video surveillance.
Instead, users filled the gap with false claims about “Amelia Carter.” Posts urged officials and media to “give her name.” Some claimed she was on her way to visit her grandmother in Queens, even though the victim had been set on fire at the other end of the subway line in Brooklyn.
Some posts compared it to the February 2024 killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by a Venezuelan who was in the country illegally, which became a political rallying point for Republicans during the presidential campaign for increased border security.
As the falsehood spread, some began sharing a photo of a real Amelia Carter, who then had to post on X that she was “alive and well.”
But the original image shared in many of these posts showed signs of being created by a generative adversarial network – a type of AI that can be used to create images of counterfeit people that are hard to differentiate from reality are different – said Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics and misinformation at the University of California, Berkeley.
Farid pointed out that the nondescript nature of the portrait photo and the orientation of the eyes were signs that the image may have been generated by AI, but acknowledged that the low quality made proper analysis hard.
At a time when many expect instant answers, Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, noted that many people have lost patience for “that awkward moment when we don’t have all the information.”
Bad actors often take advantage of this, she said, preying on the public’s desire to find out what’s going on and pursue their own agendas.
On Tuesday, authorities finally revealed the victim of the subway fire, saying Kawam was from New Jersey and had briefly been in a homeless shelter in New York after recently moving to the city.
According to prosecutors, Zapeta, whose address matches a shelter that provides shelter and drug lend a hand, has been charged with murder and arson. He has not yet entered a plea and his attorney declined to comment.
