Wall Street fell briefly this Monday morning after a false news about an explosion in the Pentagonwhich was later denied by the authorities.
The false news, published by a user on that social network and shared by the Russian media account RT -which later deleted it-, among others, included an image that could have been generated by artificial intelligence and that it showed a column of smoke in the vicinity of the Pentagon.
Before he Defense Department and the Arlington (Virginia) firefighters to deny that point, the image went viral enough to scare Wall Street, where the S&P index it fell about 0.26% in a few minutes, according to Business Insider.
“Can confirm that this was fake news and that the Pentagon was not attacked today,” a Pentagon spokesperson told the media.
“There is not one burst or incident taking place on or near the Pentagon reservation, and there is no immediate danger or risk to the public,” the firefighters said on their Twitter account.
Shortly after the denials, Wall Street quickly rebounded from that brief negative spanwhich nevertheless meant the movement of billions of dollars in the market.
The circulation of fake news in Twitter, a social network that has opened its conditions to obtain a verification seal to any user who pays for it, and its impact on the stock market, have reopened the debate on the limits and the need to regulate artificial intelligence, although it is not entirely clear if the image was generated by the AI.