Table of Contents
Summarised by Centrist
A 1News investigation has found that thousands of New Zealanders are engaging with Facebook “news” pages with fabricated images.
At least 10 such pages were identified, including one called NZ News Hub, which mimicked the look and tone of real news outlets while publishing no original reporting.
The page used AI-written text alongside unlabelled, synthetic images, some of which depicted real people or tragic events inaccurately.
In several cases, images were altered in disturbing ways. Photos linked to fatal accidents and suicides were manipulated, and natural disasters were exaggerated to appear far more destructive than they were.
Emergency responders were sometimes shown wearing foreign uniforms or carrying weapons not used in New Zealand.
AUT media researcher Merja Myllylahti said the pages repurpose legitimate information in a misleading way. “They take obviously legitimate news from police notifications or press releases… but then they create AI images that are not real, and they are not labelled,” she said.
Victoria University AI lecturer Andrew Lensen warned, “It’s clearly an emerging problem, and it’s getting worse and worse.” He noted that even when the underlying story is real, “details may not be accurate.”
Civil defence agencies have issued public warnings that “accurate information matters, especially during an emergency response,” and urged people to rely on trusted sources.
Both researchers warned that the fake pages risk further eroding trust in legitimate media. As Lensen put it: “People might go, ‘Why would I trust what 1News or the Herald is doing?’”
By Monday afternoon, NZ News Hub had disappeared from Facebook. Meta did not comment before publication.
