ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – In the days of AI and ChatGPT, you can’t always believe what you see or what you read. 

KOB 4 watches this sort of thing closely in the newsroom. We got a curious case when a New Mexico athletic coach told us about some nasty headlines that started popping up in his social media feed with his photo attached. 

Then, he got pretty worried when others in the basketball community started texting him asking why he had been suspended. The articles kept coming with even worse false accusations.

Malik Waters is an Amateur Athletic Union coach and also the director of D1 New Mexico, a statewide program that works with athletes of all ages. When the texts started flying, he went from surprise to worried.

“One of my friends who is actually my seventh grade coach, his wife sent it to him, and he sent it to me,” said Malik Waters.

But what happens when that information is completely inaccurate? 

“It said, ‘New Mexico Youth Basketball Coach has been arrested with three of his best players as a product of a drug deal.’ And I was like now this is getting crazy,” said Waters. 

With AI-generated images and articles, Waters knows all too well how things can spin out of control. 

“It is a picture of my players, it was this exact picture right here, of myself and my players two years ago. So the players are 22 years old by now,” said Waters. 

An Aug. 26 headline says: New Mexico Youth Basketball team has been suspended from participating in the conference they played in due to the bad behavior of the head coach.

Another headline, reads: New Mexico Youth Basketball head coach has been fired, effective immediately. 

“It didn’t have my name, it didn’t say the name of the program. It didn’t say anything in particular it just said the program was suspended, bad behavior but nothing about the behavior,” said Waters. 

That website is “Sky Sports News.” Even just a quick scroll will tell you everything you need to know. The same headline is repeated multiple times with different photos attached.

Digital media expert, Kristelle Siarza-Moon, says there are things people can do to spot fake or AI-generated content. 

“Verifying with other sources or doing a reverse image search. Google image is a really great way that you can search an image off of an image. So you can do into that and see if whether or not the image pops up in different places. Case in point for this particular situation,” said Kristelle Siarza-Moon, CEO of Siarza.  

Looking up the reporter on the story to see if they even exist.

“Is the story generated out of a local news station, or website, or was it generated from some type of random national website that no one has ever heard of?” said Siarza-Moon. 

Legitimate news outlets will credit images, cite sources, and reach out to the people involved. Something that never happened in the confusing case of Waters.

He has alerted other coaches whose photos were put up on this website so they are aware. 

Waters was able to set the record straight, but he hopes this can serve as a warning to other folks about the dangers in digital media and how to spot fake articles.