It took police more than a week to publicly identify Debrina Kawam, 57, as the woman who was fatally set on fire in a New York subway train last month. But on the internet, it took just hours for a false name to begin spreading.
In posts that circulated widely on social media after Kawam's death on Dec. 22, users claimed without evidence that the victim was a 29-year-old named “Amelia Carter.” These posts ricocheted across platforms, often accompanied by an image of a young woman that experts say may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
