Experts warn against fake AI posts amid search for missing Gus Lamont in Yunta, South Australia

Experts are urging people to think before they share after an “incredibly distressing” AI-generated image of a blond boy went viral amid a wave of misinformation about missing Gus Lamont.

• Friend’s plea to leave Gus’s family alone

Experts are urging people to think before they share after an “incredibly distressing” AI-generated image of a blond boy being placed into a car went viral amid a wave of misinformation about missing South Australian boy Gus Lamont.

Within a day of being posted on Facebook this week, the AI-generated image had been shared thousands of times along with a caption falsely claiming a boy resembling Gus, was spotted with an “unfamiliar man” in a car about 100km from Yunta.

It’s one of several fake posts that have spread across social media like wildfire since Gus vanished from his family’s remote sheep station near Yunta on September 27.

Missing-persons expert Dr Sarah Wayland, from CQ University, said such AI images “can be incredibly distressing for family and friends.”

Experts warn fake AI-generated images like this one circulating on Facebook about missing four-year-old Gus Lamont can be incredibly distressing for family and friends.

“The challenge of stories that have shown to be newsworthy or share-worthy means that the continual push for clicks is blurring the lines between credible and non-credible updates,” she said.

“When the community engages with these sites, pause and consider who is sharing the information, whether it’s verified by SAPOL, and what the usual focus of that page is.”

It comes asMeta’s AI search tool, used across Facebook and Instagram, has come under fire for spreading misinformation about Gus’s case.

When users search for updates on Gus, one AI-generated result falsely claimed police had found “Gus’s toy, which he was holding when disappeared, with blood on it”, while another links to a website declaring Gus was found alive – both completely untrue.

Dr Wayland, who has spent more than 20 years researching missing-persons cases, said the explosion of AI misinformation and online speculation was compounding the pain for families already living through heartbreak.

“For families of missing people, they’re living with both the actual trauma of the waiting and the information from police … but they’re also now living with the imagined trauma of what the community is offering up to them,” Dr Wayland said.

A screenshot of some unsubstantiated responses generated by Meta’s AI, which falsely claimed police had found Gus’s toy with blood on it during the search, while others wrongly stated the four-year-old had been found alive. Source: Facebook

“It’s doubling or almost tripling the trauma, because it’s blurring that line between what do we actually know while we’re waiting.”

With Gus’s case capturing national attention, Dr Wayland said the fascination taps into something uniquely Australian.

“There is something very unique about the Australian experience of missing persons, it’s tied to this idea of the wild Outback and the fact that people can disappear without a trace,” she said.

“When we’re presented with a story that seems simple, a young child playing near home who suddenly disappears, it speaks to our fascination with how someone can be here one minute and gone the next.”

She said Australians often interpret new tragedies through the lens of historic cases.

“We often will rely on those cases that we have community history with, all the way back to Azaria Chamberlain, picnic at hanging rock, the backpacker murders,” she said.

“There’s a kind of true-crime mysticism that takes hold, rather than recognising each case is unique. This is the story of one young child who’s missing. It’s not necessarily the replicated story of a case that we’ve known from the past.”

Dr Sarah Wayland.

Missing four-year-old August 'Gus' in the state's mid north. Picture: SA Police

She warned false claims and viral rumours also distracted police from real work.

“It takes police’s attention away from the search and rescue or recovery operations and requires them to answer questions that have nothing to do with what’s happening right now,” she said.

SA Police Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott has also urged people to stop speculating online.

“It’s not helpful,” he said. “It is not appropriate to speculate in these circumstances.

“If you were to put yourselves in the shoes of a family, who would be clearly distraught about the loss of a small child, it paints a little bit of a different picture.

“We understand that there’s going to be keyboard detectives out there who have these various theories, but everything we know at this point in time is that Gus wandered away from the property and we have not been able to find him.”

Police have maintained from the start that they believe Gus simply wandered off and say there is no reason to suspect foul play.

Meta has been contacted for comment.

Originally published as Experts warn against fake AI posts amid search for missing Gus Lamont in Yunta, South Australia