When fire season grips Canada, the images are visceral: orange skies, charred forests, families fleeing with whatever they can carry. For thousands of people, the nightmare is already real. But for millions more, the nightmare is being manufactured. As Canada battles multiple raging wildfires, a second disaster is unfolding on social media and messaging apps. Misinformation and disinformation about how the fires started, who is to blame, and what is actually happening are spreading as fast as the flames—sometimes faster. In a special report for The National, CBC’s Ashley Fraser takes a close look at this shadow epidemic: how artificial intelligence is being weaponized to create fake images and false narratives, how conspiracy theories are twisting public fear into dangerous suspicion, and how a growing ecosystem of online opportunists is turning tragedy into profit. It is a complicated and unsettling story, but it matters. Because when the truth becomes a casualty of the crisis, real firefighting efforts are compromised, real victims are harmed, and real communities cannot begin to heal.
The most unsettling part of this new information war is how convincingly AI can mimic reality. In the past, a rumor might have been a blurry photo with a misleading caption. Today, generative tools can produce hyper-realistic images of burning landmarks, desperate animals, or heroic firefighters that never existed. Some of these creations are shared innocently by people who believe they are real—perhaps an illustration of a deer fleeing a wall of flame, or a beautiful but impossible sunset over a smoke-filled sky. But no matter how dazzling or heartbreaking they are, they are fake, and they do real damage. They distract emergency management officials who must answer for them. They generate panic in communities that already have too little clarity. They also train ordinary people to become cynical, eroding the ability to trust legitimate photos and official updates. Deepfake technology makes the problem even worse. A convincing video of a politician saying something inflammatory about fire policy can be created in minutes. A manipulated audio clip of an evacuation order could, in theory, send people racing toward danger. Fraser’s report highlights how these tools are no longer confined to fringe corners of the internet; they are being amplified by bots, share-bait pages, and even mainstream platforms whose algorithms favor outrageous and emotional content. The human mind is not built to fact-check in real time, especially when a threat feels urgent. We see an image that makes us angry or afraid, and we share it before the rational part of the brain catches up. That is exactly the vulnerability AI is designed to exploit.
Conspiracy theories have found a natural home in this fog of uncertainty. When a disaster is as immense and complex as a country-wide wildfire season, the real explanations—dry fuels, drought, lightning, human carelessness, and climate change—can feel impersonal and unsatisfying. A familiar narrative is easier to swallow, especially one that assigns blame to powerful actors. Viral posts have claimed that wildfires are being deliberately set by governments to force people from their land, or that space lasers are being aimed at forests to trigger fires, or that eco-terrorists are going on arson sprees to justify climate restrictions. None of these claims hold up to scrutiny. Yet they keep circulating because they offer something science cannot: a simple villain and a clear story. These theories often borrow from older anti-government myths, dusted off and updated for the moment. They thrive on social media where the metric is engagement, not accuracy. A bizarre claim about government-controlled weather is far more likely to be shared by a group of believers than a moderation message from a fire department. Fraser’s reporting shows that these ideas are not harmless. People who believe them may ignore evacuation orders, harass firefighters, refuse aid, or show up to fight nonexistent conspiracies instead of protecting themselves and their neighbors. The real fire crews are then forced not only to battle flames but also to battle lies. Misinformation about fire causes has also become a political weapon, used to dismiss climate science and undermine any proposal for new safety standards. In this way, a wildfire stops being just an environmental catastrophe; it becomes a cultural flashpoint, an ideological battleground where facts are the first casualty.
And where there is chaos, there are always those trying to profit from it. One of the most disturbing aspects of the online wildfire misinformation boom is the clear financial incentive behind much of it. Social media influencers, some with millions of followers, turn tragedy into a stream of engagement. Every angry comment, every heartbroken reaction, every share pushes their posts higher in algorithms, which means more ad revenue, more sponsorships, more opportunities for merchandising and paid subscribers. Some creators go further, selling miracle products that promise to protect homes from fire or purify smoke-filled air, often with no evidence. Fake survival kits, emergency apps, fire-retardant sprays, and “natural remedies” for smoke inhalation appear quickly in online stores, carefully designed to capitalize on fear and hope. Then there are the outright scams: fraudulent fundraising pages using real photos of smoke and flames, claiming to raise money for victims and evacuees. Well-meaning people who want to help will donate, only to discover later that the money never reached a single family. Even worse, some bad actors use AI to fabricate emotional testimonies from “survivors” — staged videos with artificial voices and computer-generated faces—to make their fake charities look authentic. Fraser’s report underscores a painful irony: the very technologies that could be used to inform and protect people are being used to manipulate them for cash. Behind every hidden agenda is a payment processor, an ad network, a social media company. None of these actors has a strong incentive to slow the spread of misinformation because the outrage is profitable. The tragedy becomes a product, and the public is both the consumer and the raw material. The victims are not just the people whose stories are stolen, but everyone who succumbs to the illusion that they are getting reliable information in a time of danger.
The consequences of this misinformation surge are not abstract. They have a devastating, measured impact on emergency response. When rumors identify false locations of fires, firefighters are forced to respond to phantom emergencies while real fires burn nearby. When fake maps instruct people to evacuate in the wrong direction, lives are put in immediate danger. When conspiracy theories claim that fire officials cannot be trusted, residents refuse to follow orders, and first responders must spend precious minutes convincing them to leave their homes. Public health agencies also lose ground: if a person believes the smoke warnings are deliberate government scaremongering, they will not protect their lungs, even when the air quality index is at hazardous levels. Misinformation has been linked to delayed evacuation, adverse health outcomes, and a deepening partisan divide over climate change. It also takes a psychological toll. Survivors who have lost homes may find themselves targeted by online trolls who insist their loss is a hoax or that they deserved it for political reasons. That cruelty is amplified by networks of strangers who never set foot near a wildfire but have strong opinions about it. Trust, once broken, is very hard to rebuild. If citizens cannot agree on what is true, they cannot agree on solutions. Emergency preparedness becomes impossible when people are too busy fighting lies to plan for the next fire season. In essence, misinformation is not a separate story from the fires; it is part of the same story of harm. It makes every aspect of the disaster worse, from the moment the first spark flies to the long, slow recovery that follows.
So what can be done? Fraser’s report does not offer easy answers, but it points toward a path. The first line of defense is a more critically engaged public. It is not enough to ask “Is this image real?” We must ask: Where did this come from? Who benefits from my belief in this? Are official agencies saying this? Before sharing anything, we can pause and verify through trusted local sources, such as fire departments, emergency management offices, and reputable news organizations like the CBC. The second line of defense is accountability for platforms. Social media companies must do more to label AI-generated content, demonetize lies, and reduce the algorithmic amplification of misinformation. Right now, their systems are often blind to context—or, worse, they lead with outrage because outrage generates profit. That needs to change, and governments have a role in pushing for transparency. The third line of defense is storytelling. When the news is full of fear, people crave connection, and that makes them vulnerable to narratives that fill the emotional gap. Verified, human-centered stories about evacuees, firefighters, and community volunteers can offer the same emotional pull as a conspiracy theory, but with a foundation of truth. We can support journalism that investigates and explains, rather than simply reporting whatever goes viral. Ultimately, we cannot stop wildfires overnight, and we cannot force every bad actor to abandon their scheme. But we can choose to see through the fog. We can choose to insist that facts matter. We can choose to be the kind of audience that rewards honesty and punishes manipulation. In the middle of disaster, that choice may be the most important thing any of us does. The fires will burn, perhaps for a long time, but we do not have to let the lies burn us too.