Did Anderson Cooper build free hospital for homeless people?

A rumor spread in late September 2026 that CNN television host Anderson Cooper built a free hospital for homeless people. According to the claim, the journalist opened the Anderson Cooper Homestead Medical Center in New York, complete with 250 beds, 120 apartments and a range of additional services — all at zero cost to patients.

Snopes readers searched our website and emailed us about the claim, with one reader asking, “Did Anderson Cooper build a free hospital for homeless people in New York?”

Several Facebook users shared the rumor. The posts generally featured the same image allegedly showing Cooper cutting a ribbon in front of a building with a sign reading, “Anderson Cooper Medical Center.”

(Jeannette Piña via Facebook)

According to the posts, Cooper said of the hospital, “This is the legacy I want to leave behind.” The facility allegedly cost $142 million, with the Anderson Cooper Foundation raising all funds from anonymous donors over an 18-month period — complete with no public fanfare or announcements until opening.

In short, the rumor is false. No evidence suggests Cooper opened a free hospital for homeless people. The claim is nothing more than “AI slop,” spam-type content generated using artificial intelligence tools that has, in recent years, deluged social media with untrue stories, as well as fake images and videos, usually featuring public figures.

CNN spokesperson Shimrit Sheetrit said via email that the rumor is false.

Researching the claim

Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo uncovered no news media outlets reporting that Cooper opened a hospital. Even if a famous person secretly raised funds to open a hospital without publicity, news organizations would at some point publish articles about the facility’s existence. Officials would eventually launch a website or use other online means to alert homeless people of the project and its offerings. No such information has been published or shared.

The story in the posts is inconsistent with the AI-generated images accompanying it. For example, the text in one post refers to the hospital as “Anderson Cooper Homestead Medical Center,” while the image features a sign reading, “Anderson Cooper Medical Center.” A different post (archived) contains other fake images of Cooper wearing completely different clothes at the supposed opening, with the different facility name, “The Anderson Cooper Center.” The posts also say there was “no ribbon” and “no fanfare” at the supposed opening, despite the images containing both a ribbon and a crowd.

This claim possibly originated from a post on a Facebook page called The Silver Voice, which links to an external website hosting an advertisement-filled article. That website’s domain name appears to be at least partially in Vietnamese, a language that often appears alongside “AI slop” website content, as Snopes has previously reported.

The heartwarming subject matter about Cooper’s purported grand act of kindness resembles glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as “stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.” Creators of such content capitalize on social media users’ willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has also previously reported on this business strategy.)

AI-generated content and similar rumors

A scan of the Facebook posts’ text with AI detection tool Pangram displays the results, “We believe that this entire text is AI,” and, “100% of this text is AI.” A scan of one of the post’s images returns the same result.

Snopes doesn’t depend solely on AI detection tools, which vary in reliability, and instead considers the tools’ results as one of several data points toward judging an image’s authenticity. With Pangram, we bear in mind the platform’s strong performance in third-party and internal evaluations, as well as some criticisms of the tool.

Reporters at fact-checking website Lead Stories previously reported on many other celebrities being named in similar “AI slop” stories about them opening free hospitals for homeless people.

Snopes also previously addressed a false claim that first lady Melania Trump and her son, Barron Trump, opened a hospital for homeless people, and a similar rumor about late-night host Stephen Colbert and his wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert. The latter also features an AI-generated image that resembles the fake photo of Cooper.

For further reading, we previously reported about numerous fabricated stories that circulated online following the deadly Texas flash floods in July 2025, as well as how those false accounts show signs of originating in Southeast Asia.

Sources