Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, disappeared on January 31 from her home in Arizona in a disappearance case that gained national attention. FBI officials say they don’t have any suspects in his potential abduction, but video and images from a Nest surveillance camera released Tuesday show a masked figure at Guthrie’s door that morning.

The new images bring up something that happens in almost every high-profile criminal case these days: Social media users run the images through artificial intelligence tools like xAI’s Grok, trying to get a proper-looking photo of the suspect without his mask. But that’s not how AI works.

Better than nothing?

Matt Wallace, a popular distributor of misinformation on X since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022, tweeted on Tuesday, “Hey @grok remove the kidnapper’s mask and show us what he looks like.”

Wallace shared what Grok did with the caption, “This is what I got! Better than nothing,” as you can see in the screenshots below.

The resulting image is literally worthless.

It’s just a random picture of a human face created by Grok. It has no connection to reality and is arguably worse than nothing because it inevitably spreads to X as a possible guide to internet sleuths. This is what happened in the case of the Charlie Kirk shooting suspect.

AI sleuthing is now commonplace

After Kirk was killed last year, conspiracy theorists like MAGA influencer Laura Loomer ran security camera footage through Grok in an attempt to get a clearer picture of the suspect. But like us explained at the timeAI can never provide more visual information than is already there. And the pictures shared by Loomer were later used by internet users to question the correct identity of the suspect who was eventually arrested in the case, Tyler Robinson.

After all, AI-enhanced images aren’t like Robinson’s because AI doesn’t provide anything useful. It simply adds information that isn’t there, effectively creating a face of a new person that isn’t based on reality. Other conspiracy theorists have taken the image and compared it to Robinson, insisting that there are some great conspiracy walking

Nancy Guthrie’s case sparked a similar rush among social media users to run these new security camera images through AI. And they will also be disappointed with the results, believing that we saw a suspect arrested. The case is running up against all kinds of obstacles and lack of information, based on the latest reports from mainstream news outlets.

Nancy Guthrie was last seen around 9:45 pm on Saturday, Jan. 31 after having dinner with a local family and was reported missing by his family the day after he went missing show up at church. The Guthrie family received ransom demands that included payments in Bitcoin, according to ABC Newsbut it is not clear how reliable that is.

A man from Hawthorne, California, has been identified as 42-years-old Derrick Callellawas arrested after allegedly asking for ransom even though he did not kidnap anyone. And although it seems that Guthrie may have been kidnapped for ransom, no one can say for sure.

Kath Patel crowdsourced her case

The footage released by the FBI was recorded on the morning of January 31, according to a tweet from FBI Director Kash Pateland is “rderived from the rest of the data located in the backend systems.”

Several news outlets have reported that Guthrie “does not have a subscription” to Nest, but it’s unclear exactly what Patel means by “backend system.” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said on air Tuesday night that it was pulled from “remote servers.”

The FBI’s release of the Nest footage was widely seen as a form of desperation. But it’s clear that the public doesn’t know what may or may not be being assembled behind the scenes. And there are likely other security cameras in place that can be checked for evidence, especially if companies like Ring normalize the type of mass surveillance that we now live under.

Lots of idiots around

Matthew Wallace isn’t the only person currently trying to run security camera footage from Guthrie’s case through AI. All you have to do is check Patel’s answers on X to see people asking Grok for “improved” and colorized versions in pictures, as well as close ups that would reveal something new.

One user was furious with the FBI, writing, “this entire video can be colorized. why can’t this be done?”

Some users also add various enhancements to make the suspect look like their preferred villain, whether they’re Hispanic or Palestinian or any number of characteristics that “real” US criminals might share, depending on your bigotry.

“@grok can you put a keffiyeh on the photos head?” one user wrote on Tuesday before Grok politely followed.

These are probably the craziest people on the planet. And not just the bigots.

These people have no idea how AI works when it comes to visual information. It is not a magic tool that will give you more information than is currently available. AI just makes things up and guesses. The images currently created by Patel’s responses are a colossal waste of time and resources. But X has become a cesspool of idiots and Nazi freaks, so you see a lot of them now.

Fox News is dumb

At the same time, it’s hard to be too hard on amateur social media sleuths. Because Fox News seems so pathetic in its coverage of the case. Jesse Watters, a popular Fox host not invited to Thanksgiving of his own mother because of his political extremism, rambled and on Tuesday in his expert analysis.

“So you look at him and he’s not a professional. He’s relaxed, but he’s not very determined. He seems to move very slowly. Maybe he’s familiar with the house, but it’s not like this guy has done it before,” Watters said on TV tuEsday.

Watters went on to say that he seemed “haphazard” and “looked like a local, not someone who flew in and targeted Nancy Guthrie from out of town.” To be clear, Watters has no expertise to offer in this case, but that hasn’t stopped him from burning through the minutes.

Yes, social media makes everyone an expert. But when the mainstream TV channels are filled with people who look like crap, you have to accept that this is the world we live in today.