- Social media accounts spread the claim using AI-made news.
- Toyota Canada says the rumor about a plant move isn’t true.
- At one point, Google’s AI overview repeated the false claim.
Rumors spread quickly online, and the latest about Toyota picked up surprising momentum. Claims that Toyota is moving its Alabama manufacturing plant to Ontario, Canada, circulated on social media in recent weeks. The automaker says the story simply is not true.
Posts on X, Facebook, TikTok, and even LinkedIn confidently claimed that Toyota would shut down its Alabama plant in favor of a new facility in Canada. The posts were viewed and liked tens of thousands of times as they spread rapidly across platforms. It has since emerged that the rumors appear to trace back to accounts that regularly circulate AI-generated fake news.
Read: Toyota Investing An Extra $282 Million At Alabama Engine Factory
One post on Threads, published February 19, claimed that “Toyota just pulled the plug on their $9 billion plant in Alabama and gave it to Canada.” The account behind the post had only 404 followers, cited no sources, and still managed to collect more than 46,000 likes.
The rumor spread far enough that Toyota eventually had to step in. Speaking with The Canadian Press, Toyota Canada spokesperson Michael Bouliane said “there is no truth” to the reports.
Cases like this show how easily misinformation can spread, and why it matters where you get your news. Random social media posts from accounts with no authority are a shaky place to start.
No explanation ever accompanied the rumors about why Toyota would take such a drastic step as closing a plant in the US and opening one in Canada. Such a move would likely attract intense political scrutiny, particularly from the Trump administration, if it were to occur.
The Canadian Press reports that as the rumors circulated, even Google’s own AI Overview briefly echoed the false claims before the results were removed.
According to Google spokesperson Wendy Manton, “issues can arise when there is an absence of high-quality information on the web on a particular topic, and we use these examples to improve AI overviews broadly.”
