A Cat Named Marty Got His Own Seat on the Ferry — And Six Other Ferries at the Same Time
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7
Cities at once
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99%
AI tool score
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Local news stories
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High
Fooled Index
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AI-GENERATED — There is no Marty, no stool, and no ferry. A computer made the picture.
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The posts showed a gray cat on a small stool on a ferry, next to a sign saying the boat crew built the seat just for him. The story said Marty had ridden the same ferry to and from work for nearly four years, and people loved it. They shared it by the thousands, the way folks do with a sweet animal story.
Then the same cat started showing up everywhere. One post put Marty on a ferry in Maui, Hawaii. Another put him in Galveston, Texas, then Savannah, Georgia, then Mobile, Alabama, then Mackinac Island, Michigan, then Boston. One even put him in Apache Junction, Arizona, which has no river and no ferry at all. The same cat can’t commute by boat in seven cities, so the story fell apart.
Snopes found the posts came from a string of Facebook pages with names like “Life in [State]” and “[State] Life,” pages packed with AI-made pictures. The very same pages had just pushed another fake, photos of giant anti-data-center signs painted on water towers. One page, Massachusetts Life, posted both the cat and the water towers, so the same people were behind both.
Snopes ran one of the cat photos through two tools that screen for AI, Sightengine and Hive, and both put it at a 99% chance of being AI-made. Snopes was careful to say those tools get it wrong sometimes, so they don’t settle it alone. But with the same cat in seven cities, a sign with the wrong date, and no local paper covering any of it, the picture was clear. Marty isn’t real.
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The same cat, seven cities. Marty turned up on ferries in Maui, Galveston, Savannah, Mobile, Mackinac Island, Boston and Apache Junction. One cat can’t commute by boat in seven places, and Apache Junction has no water.
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The dates didn’t add up. The sign on his stool said “Est. 2020,” and a Texas version said “Est. 2021,” but the story said he’d ridden for nearly four years, which would be 2022. None of the dates matched.
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No local paper ran it. A cat with his own ferry seat is just the kind of story local news loves. Not one paper ran it, because there was no cat and no seat.
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Same pages, other fakes. The pages that posted Marty, with names like “Life in [State],” had just posted fake photos of anti-data-center signs on water towers. One page posted both.
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🚨 100% AI-Generated
Marty the ferry cat isn’t real, and neither is his little stool. A network of Facebook pages used AI to make the picture and the story, then posted the same cat in seven different cities to farm shares and clicks. It’s a sweet story, which is exactly why it traveled so far.
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Those Photos of Giant “You Can’t Drink Data” Signs on Water Towers Are AI. |
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Photos spread on Facebook showing huge anti-data-center messages painted across town water towers, one reading “You can’t drink data.” The pictures came from the same kind of pages that pushed the Marty fake, with names like “Life in Iowa” and “Life in Georgia.” Each page ran nearly the same caption and only swapped the state name. People do worry about how much water data centers use, and that real worry is what made the fake signs feel true. No town painted any of it.
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A Video of Trump “Canceling” Pride Month and Naming It “Confidence Month” Is a Deepfake. |
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A video going around again this June shows President Trump saying he’s canceling Pride Month and replacing it with “Confidence Month.” It’s a deepfake. The clip started as labeled satire back in May 2025, and someone cropped the “made with AI” note out before passing it around as real. Reuters and Snopes both checked, and Trump signed no such order. The account that first posted it has a long history of fake videos of public figures.
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The White House Keeps Posting AI Pictures of Trump. Those Ones Aren’t a Hoax. |
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Not every AI picture is somebody sneaking one past you. Over the past year, Trump and the White House have posted a run of AI-made images of him in over-the-top scenes, and they came straight from his own accounts, out in the open. Snopes flagged them so people wouldn’t mistake them for real photos, but nobody was hiding the AI. The point is that an AI image can come from an official account on purpose, so “it’s AI” and “it’s a hoax” aren’t always the same thing.
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YOUR REALITY DETECTOR TOOLKIT |
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Today’s Skill: Spot the Copy-Paste Fake
The Marty story fell apart because the same fake got posted in too many places at once.
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Watch for the same story in many towns
Marty “commuted” by ferry in seven cities at once. If the same heartwarming story shows up in town after town, it’s a template, not the truth.
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Look for small details that don’t match
The sign on Marty’s stool gave a date that didn’t fit the story, and another city showed a different date. When the small facts don’t line up, trust the mismatch.
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Ask if a real paper covered it
A cat with his own ferry seat is just the kind of story local news loves, but no paper ran it. If a sweet local story is real, local news almost always tells it.
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