The image is likely AI generated in this case, but this does not seem like the best strategy for finding out if an image is AI generated.
They may have first ran the photo through an AI, but they also went out to verify. Or ran it after verification to understand it better, maybe
Maybe.
Imo, I think the advances in AI and the hype toward generated everything will actually be the current societies digitally-obsessed course-correction back to having a greater emphases on things like theater, live music, conversing with people in-person or even strangers (the horror, I know) simply to connect/consume more meaningfully. It'll level out integrating both instead of being so digitally loop-sided as humans adapt to enjoy both.*
To me, this shows a need for more local journalism that has been decimated by the digital world. By journalism, I mean it in a more traditional sense, not bloggers and podcast (no shade some follow principled, journalistic integrity -- as some national "traditional" one don't). Local journalism is usually held to account by the community, and even though the worldwide BBC site has this story, it was the local reporters they had that were able to verify. If these AI stories/events accelerate a return to local reporting with a worldwide audience, then all the better.
* I try to be a realist, but when I err, it tends to be on the optimist side
I suspect that AI was prompted to create the image, not that this was an incidental "hallucination".
Cynical-me suspects this may have been a trial run by malicious actors experimenting with disrupting critical infrastructure.
It’s really incredible how the supposedly unassailable judgement of mass consumer preference consistently leads our society to produce worse shit so we can have more or it, and rewards the chief enshittifiers with mega yachts.