The collapse of the Baltimore Bridge, an event anticipated by an episode of The Simpsons (again)?

On multiple occasions, episodes of The Simpsons have appeared to predict the future by anticipating current events.

Internet users confirm that this is the case again with the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge after being hit by a merchant ship.

Please note: The image published on social networks to support these statements was created by AI.

It’s become a habit now: when a major news event occurs in the world, Internet users find a sequence from The Simpsons series that mentions it in advance. The screenwriters who imagined the adventures of Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa are thus presented as visionaries, able to read the future.

The latest picture of this ability to expect? Collapse of the Baltimore Bridge, one of whose pillars was hit by a container ship. On social networks, an image is widely displayed, with the following caption: “The Simpsons were right, once again”. A message indicates that one has been retrieved from a past episode.

A convincing image, but generated by AI

Fans of the series will surely have a hard time remembering the episode during which the Simpson family allegedly had a bridge collapse. And for good reason: in the 35 seasons and 763 episodes produced since 1989, such a scene has never occurred.

It turns out that the image relayed online is completely artificial: it is a creation created by a computer using software using artificial intelligence. If the results seem quite convincing on the surface, a series of details have alarmed purists. Lisa’s character, in particular, whose hair has ten dots on an AI-generated image. In the series, regardless of the episode, he has only eight.

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To confirm these elements, the American site Snopes submitted the image to a computer program specialized in detecting AI-generated content. The latter gave a clear result, estimating a 100% probability that it was the creation of a generation by artificial intelligence.

Note that to support the thesis of the new successful Simpsons prediction, Internet users have also found an extract from the series, which is quite real. In episode 2 of season 8, it’s actually a question of the destruction of a bridge, which happens off-camera and of which we see no image on screen. In any case it has nothing to do with Baltimore, as the reference is to the Queensboro Bridge (or “59th Street Bridge”), a building located in New York.

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