Washington: A new YouTube tool for battling misinformation failed in a highly public way on Monday, wrongly linking video of the flaming collapse of the spire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Notre-Dame Cathedral spire on the cusp of collapse. Credit:AP

As images of the iconic tower falling to the streets played on newscasts around the world - and on the YouTube channels mirroring those newscasts - "information panels" appeared in boxes below the videos providing details about the collapses of New York's World Trade Centre after the terrorist attack, which killed thousands of people.

The 9/11 tragedy is a frequent subject of hoaxes, and the information panels were posted automatically, likely because of visual similarities that computer algorithms detected between the two incidents.

YouTube began rolling out the information panels providing factual information about the subjects of frequent hoaxes in the past few months.