That leaves much more of a paper trail. People routinely are fined and jailed for pulling off such "pranks", partially because "fake threats"/"abuse of emergency response resources" are an exception to many freedom-of-speech laws.

A fake photo of a collapsed bridge however won't cross that criminal threshold.

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SoftTalker 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If you create a fake photo/video with intent to cause disruption it absolutely crosses the threshold.

	▲	euroderf 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Intent is a valid legal concept. Certainly there's no way to try "swatting" without crossing that line of intent, but (for example) less-threatening prank phone calls can be in the grey area. I presume there is established legal practice for handling these kinds of things, but for generative images the legal limits won't achieve wide awareness until some teenagers and assorted morons get hauled into court.
	▲	hurturue 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		intent is very difficult to prove. "I was just memeing, sir"