Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver and former Palisades resident, has officially been charged with starting the Palisades fire, which took the lives of 12 people and burned 6,000 homes in Los Angeles. The fire was the most destructive blaze in L.A.’s history and began on January 7th, burning 23,000 acres, causing $150 billion in damages.

Rinderknecht was arrested in Florida on Tuesday, October 7th and is set to appear in court today. Among the evidence investigators collected from Rinderknecht were AI-generated images of L.A. consumed in fire, which he made using OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The alleged prompt he used was “a dystopian painting divided into distinct parts that blend together seamlessly. On the far left, there is a burning forest. Next to it, a crowd of people is running away from the fire, leading to the middle.”

Today we are announcing the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht on a criminal complaint charging him with maliciously starting what became the Palisades Fire in January.
?The complaint alleges that Rinderknecht's started a fire in Pacific Palisades on New Year's Day --… pic.twitter.com/UzrFa0Lmrz

— Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) October 8, 2025

Rinderknecht allegedly started the fire with a flare gun after completing an Uber ride in the Palisades neighborhood and soon after relocated to Florida. According to the BBC, investigators used Rinderknecht’s phone data to place him at the scene the night the fires began.

If Rinderknecht is found guilty, he won’t be the first person to use ChatGPT to help him envision his crimes and sadly, he won’t be the last either.