Palm Beach plane crash video confirmed real, NTSB says

Dash cam footage from a Palm Beach County roadway shows a private jet nosediving into the pavement and erupting in flames. The video is real. Social media users who called the clip artificial intelligence generated were wrong, according to a fact-check by PolitiFact and Central Florida Public Media.

The Learjet 60 crashed near Cresthaven at approximately 12:51 p.m. ET on Nov. 1. The aircraft was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on Nov. 1 that everyone on board died. The Associated Press reported that all nine people on the plane perished in the incident.

A Nov. 1 post on X claimed the video was 100% AI generated. The post included a screen recording of an AI detection tool called Hive Moderation. The tool’s analysis in that recording indicated the clip contained AI-generated content. PolitiFact tested the original video against the same tool. The tool did not flag the footage as fake or manipulated.

The original source of the video is Aki Kuusisto, a digital creator from West Palm Beach. Kuusisto first shared the clip on Facebook. In a comment on the post, Kuusisto wrote, "This was not quite what I had in mind when I installed the dash cam." Major news organizations, including CNN, CBS News, and the BBC, have also shared the footage, confirming its veracity.

National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman spoke at a press conference on Nov. 2. He stated that the aircraft experienced turbulence and encountered ice before the crash. The NTSB has not yet determined the cause of the accident. Timothy Monville, who is leading the investigation, said the agency has just begun documenting the incident.

Monville noted that the investigation will take several days. He identified the recovery of major wreckage from the crater on the roadway as the biggest obstacle. "We have a lot of work to do on scene," Monville said.

Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, explained why some people doubt the video. Linvill said the phenomenon is known as the "liar's dividend." People are accustomed to being lied to in the age of AI, so they do not recognize the truth when it is presented. "That is what is occurring with the video of the Palm Beach crash," Linvill said.

One X account that questioned the video was amplified by bot accounts linked to Russian Storm-1516. This campaign uses influencers to promote false claims in the United States. PolitiFact rates the claim that the crash video was 100% AI generated as Pants on Fire.