Seems legit. My AI senses are not tingling, but who knows. That's a huge tree!

I googled

"cottonwood large lincoln, kansas"

got this

https://www.gatheringgrowth.org/trees-of-significance/wheeling-creek-sycamore-bxm7g-g8dx8

I think it's real, even though the URL is for the wrong species, it's clearly not a plane tree. That sometimes happens if content managers are lazy and reuse a URL string.

I also google largest cotton wood in Kansas. This appears to be one of the "smaller" trees with others being 37 to 38' in diameter. However I do question the picture. Your out stretched arms are about equal to your height. The average person is about 5.5' There for 7 people should be able to go around the tree at arms length. There are 7 people in the picture and they only go half way around.

The tree in question resides in the northwest corner of the Lincoln, KS city park and is the same pictures shown in davids link.

I agree the original photo above has been tampered with, no doubt, and appears to have been changed in a high-end photo editor to show a much higher 'trunk'. Could be AI but not necessarily (you can do a lot with a really good editor).

If you look at the dimensions in davids link, a 381" circumference amounts to ~10 ft. diameter. KR's deduction of number of ft in the OP would be more like 35 ft. :-)

I found this tree using google street view and when I viewed the opposite direction from this tree shows the exact same things in the background as you see in the OP.

And the stone structure to the left in the picture below shows the same stone structure as one of the pictures in davids link.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/City+Park,+Lincoln,+KS

Maybe the people in the first picture were midgets?

Srsly though, AI is such a scourge. I should have looked for pictures of that tree with people around it!

I like watching pet/animal videos from The Dodo on Youtube. Theirs are still OK, but there's a proliferation of channels now that make fake versions of the same type of content.

Let's just say, we all like a little entertainment and I can understand, especially during slow times, people playing around with their computers, but for me, If I'm to be wowed, I want to be wowed by the 'real thing'. Life's too short to settle for anything less. imo. :^)

OK, so it looks "mostly" legit. So then, the branch "crown" of branches emerging out of the single trunk is indeed startling. One would think a cottonwood that big out on the plains would have some damage/wear&tear at least. The big County champ cottonwood in the Hagerstown City park (MD), last time I saw, was showing serious decline from branch damage & death. Pic shown is long ago when in good health.

Seriously. screw AI

I wonder if the clustered branches of the KS tree could be the result of a tree that was once 'broken off' in a storm? Just a WAG.

IGG, that cottonwood looks like it had been damaged quite a lot, but then re-sprouted a fair bit too.

Struck by lightening many times. It looks so bad in the winter, when all the scars are visible! Tree trimmers routinely stopped in winter, trying to get a job taking down ’that dead tree’, and Grandma would politely tell them it wasn’t dead and shut the door 😉