Don’t fall for AI-generated images of Puerto Vallarta after cartel attacks

In February 2026, Mexican cartel leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera was captured by the Mexican government and inadvertently killed in the process. Cartel members subsequently responded by flattening tires, blocking roads and setting buildings and vehicles on fire, including in popular tourist towns such as Puerto Vallarta.

One post on X (archived) claimed in Spanish that an image accompanying the post was a “panoramic view of Puerto Vallarta,” according to X’s automatic translations. The image depicted various buildings in the resort town on fire, including Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, one of the most iconic buildings in Puerto Vallarta.

(X user @EmilioVallejoRL)

The same image was shared as a real image of Puerto Vallarta elsewhere, including on Instagram (archived), Facebook (archived) and X (archived).

On the contrary, this was not a real image of Puerto Vallarta during the February 2026 cartel violence in the city. It was generated with artificial intelligence tools.

The most immediate giveaway is the diamond-shaped Google Gemini logo on the bottom right of the image. Using Gemini, a person can run an image through a SynthID check, which identifies invisible watermarks that Google AI products put in images and videos when they generate or edit them. A SynthID check for the image of Puerto Vallarta on fire confirmed the image was “generated or edited using Google AI.”

Many of the buildings in the AI image are distorted and merge into neighboring buildings in nonsensical ways, which is another indication of AI generation. For example, real photos of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Google Maps and Getty Images show that the church has a large yellow dome on one side and a distinctive crown atop the spire on the other side. However, the AI church’s yellow dome appears to be missing from inside of the smoke and the crown is distorted into a jumbled, messy state.

English-language news sources would have reported on or photographed the most iconic building in Puerto Vallarta, a popular destination for American and Canadian tourists, on fire. We first uploaded the image into Google Lens to perform a reverse image search, but did not find any credible sources using the image or any uploads of it by credible photo agencies. We also searched Google for reporting on the church fire, but found no credible news stories or photographs taken of the fire from other angles.

The closest we could find was an image of smoke billowing from a source several blocks away from the church that was posted to Reddit.

Getty Images has posted several dozen photos of the cartel violence in Puerto Vallarta and its aftermath. Many of those photos are of burnt-out buildings and cars, but none of them is of fire or fire damage visible in or on the church.

Snopes has debunked similar pieces of media before. For example, in January 2026, we traced the source of several AI-generated images supposedly showing the aftermath of a strong snow storm in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula.