A 29-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of starting the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes in January.
Justice department officials said evidence collected from Jonathan Rinderknecht’s digital devices included an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city.
The most destructive blaze in Los Angeles’ history, it was sparked on 7 January near a hiking trail overlooking the wealthy coastal neighbourhood.
The Eaton Fire, ignited the same day in the LA area, killed another 19 people and razed 9,400 structures. The cause of that fire remains unclear. Mr Rinderknecht is due in court in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday.
The fire scorched more than 23,000 acres (9,308 hectares) and caused about $150bn (£112bn) in damage.
Wiping out whole neighbourhoods, the conflagration raged for more than three weeks, also ravaging parts of Topanga and Malibu.
Mr Rinderknecht was arrested in Florida on Tuesday and has been charged with destruction of property by means of fire, Acting US Attorney Bill Essayli told a news conference on Wednesday in Los Angeles.
“The arrest, we hope, will offer a measure of justice to all those impacted,” Mr Essayli said.
Officials said further charges – including murder – could follow.
The initial blaze Mr Rinderknecht allegedly started on New Year’s Day was called the Lachman fire.
Although it was quickly suppressed by firefighters, it continued to smoulder underground in the root structure of dense vegetation, say investigators, before flaring up again above ground in a windstorm.
The suspect was familiar with the area because he was a former resident of Pacific Palisades, officials said. He had lived one block away from the Skull Rock Trailhead, where he allegedly started the fire.
After the fires, he moved to Florida.
He lit the fire with an open flame after he completed a ride as an Uber driver on New Year’s Eve, according to the indictment.
Two passengers rode with Mr Rinderknecht earlier on New Year’s Eve. One passenger told investigators he remembered the driver had appeared agitated and angry.
Officials said they had used his phone data to pinpoint his location when the fire initially started on 1 January, but when they pressed him on details he allegedly lied to investigators, claiming he was near the bottom of the trail.
On his phone they found videos that Mr Rinderknecht had taken of firefighters trying to put out the flames.
They also found just after midnight on New Year’s Day that he repeatedly called 911, but could not get through because of patchy mobile reception on the trailhead.
On his phone was a screen recording of him trying to call emergency services and at one point being connected with a dispatcher.
Mr Rinderknecht also asked ChatGPT: “Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes?”
Investigators said the suspect wanted to “preserve evidence of himself trying to assist in the suppression of the fire”.
“He wanted to create evidence regarding a more innocent explanation for the cause of the fire,” the indictment said.
Investigators noted that Mr Rinderknecht appeared nervous during their interview with him on 24 January this year, and his carotid artery would pulsate whenever he was asked who had started the fire.
In July 2024, five months before he allegedly set the fire, Mr Rinderknecht asked ChatGPT to create an image of a “dystopian painting” that included a burning forest and a crowd of people running away from a fire.
His prompt to the AI tool included the text: “In the middle [of the painting], hundreds of thousands of people in poverty are trying to get past a gigantic gate with a big dollar sign on it.
“On the other side of the gate and the entire wall is a conglomerate of the richest people.
“They are chilling, watching the world burn down, and watching the people struggle. They are laughing, enjoying themselves, and dancing.”
A month before allegedly setting the fire, Mr Rinderknecht allegedly inputted a prompt to ChatGPT that included the text: “I literally burnt the Bible that I had. It felt amazing. I felt so liberated.”
Among the thousands of structures destroyed in the fires were the homes of a number of celebrities including Mel Gibson, Paris Hilton and Jeff Bridges.
An outside review commissioned by Los Angeles County supervisors found that “outdated policies” for sending emergency alerts had delayed evacuation warnings, among other official failings.
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