This isn’t a real image of Puerto Vallarta on fire after the killing of a cartel leader; it’s AI

The Mexican military killed Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera Cervantes, Mexico’s most wanted cartel boss, during an operation aided by U.S. intelligence information in Tapalpa, a town within the Mexican state of Jalisco.  

Violence spread after Oseguera Cervantes’ Feb. 22 killing, with suspected gang members torching buses and businesses while clashing with the authorities in multiple Mexican cities, including Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco. 

Images of Puerto Vallarta in flames have been widely reported, but one photo shared online is not real. 

A Feb. 22 TikTok post said it shows an image of Puerto Vallarta with scattered buildings on fire.

"This is not a scene from a movie, this is the city of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco in Mexico. Look at all these fires going around the city," says the man in the TikTok video. "Well, what’s happening is they’re saying that they took down the leader of El Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, AKA El Mencho… and all his people are going around all the city and just burning cars, shooting random people, fighting against the police."

Instagram and X users also shared the same image with English and Spanish captions claiming to show the unrest in Puerto Vallarta.

(Screenshot of the Instagram post.)

But that was generated with artificial intelligence. 

The image shows the logo of Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, at the bottom right corner. 

PolitiFact uploaded the image to Gemini and it confirmed the image was generated using its generative AI program. 

Visual inconsistencies signal the image is fake. Some of the cars on the streets are indistinguishable, while others look on top of each other. Some of the buildings look distorted and the smoke and the fire have unusual patterns. For example, the fire is bright orange and it sits on top of the buildings without consuming the structure, and the smoke seems to be going up in the same direction without being disrupted by the wind. 

(Screenshot of AI-generated image highlighting with red circles visual inconsistencies. At the bottom right is the Google Gemini logo.)

This image doesn’t show Puerto Vallarta after the killing of Oseguera Cervantes. We rate this claim False.