Image of Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein on private jet is AI generated | Fact check
The claim: Image shows Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein on a private jet
A Jan. 8 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) purports to show former President Donald Trump sitting on a plane beside disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“This is a picture of two guys on a private jet, going to a private island, that didn’t know each other,” reads the post.
It was shared more than 700 times in four days.
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The image is a fabrication. It was generated by artificial intelligence, according to computer science experts and AI-detection tools.
AI-generated image shows Epstein with three legs, wedding ring
The image has appeared on social media since at least May 2023, a reverse image search found. It circulated online again in early January with the unsealing of court filings related to a lawsuit against Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein's co-conspirator in a scheme to exploit and sexually abuse minors.
Earlier versions of the image have a different look and feel, with the original, high-resolution version containing more detail than the grainy one in the latest Facebook post.
“Both images depict the same scene, but the lower quality one likely went through a style model to make it appear rasterized, and hence ‘older,’” Walter Scheirer, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told USA TODAY in an email.
The image carries multiple hallmarks of being an AI creation, experts said.
“The most obvious sign of this is the figure of Epstein, who, if you look closely, is depicted as having three legs,” Scheirer said.
Other clues in the high-resolution version include a wedding band on the finger of the never-married Epstein, a warped face in the background behind Trump’s right shoulder and inconsistent reflections of the objects on the table. Those features are less prominent in the version posted to Facebook.
“By making it look old, low-res, faded, and with spots and marks, the forger can hide the more subtle effects that would otherwise give away an AI fake,” James O’Brien, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told USA TODAY in an email.
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USA TODAY ran both versions of the image through two online AI detectors. The high-resolution version that appeared first is 99.9% likely to be AI-generated, according to Hive Moderation, while that likelihood was 98.6%, according to Illuminarty. For the lower-quality version shown in the Facebook post, those AI-likelihood estimates dropped to 14.3% on Illuminarty and 0.1% on Hive Moderation.
“It’s somewhat easy for both expert humans and automated systems to detect AI content when no one has made a deliberate effort to obscure the AI nature of the content,” O’Brien said. “If someone who knows what they are doing is trying to hide their AI fakery, then it can be very hard for both expert humans and automated systems to detect.”
Many authentic photos and videos of Trump and Epstein have been published and aired by legitimate media outlets through the years. But outside of fact-check stories examining its authenticity, the image in the post does not appear in any credible news sources, and social media posts make up the vast majority of results for reverse-image searches.
Epstein, a wealthy hedge fund manager and frequent subject of online misinformation, was convicted in 2008 on Florida charges of soliciting and procuring a person under 18 for prostitution. He was arrested in 2019 on federal charges of allegedly trafficking minors.
Epstein pleaded not guilty and was found dead in his jail cell about a month later. Shortly after Epstein's arrest, then-president Trump said he "wasn't a fan" of Epstein and estimated they hadn't talked for 15 years. Trump did acknowledge that he knew Epstein "like everybody in Palm Beach knew him."
Trump has been at the center of several false claims involving AI-generated images. USA TODAY has debunked assertions based on fabricated images of the former president dancing with a teenage girl, being arrested by law enforcement and posing for a mugshot.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the image but did not immediately receive a response.
Lead Stories also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources:
Walter Scheirer, Jan. 12, Email exchange with USA TODAY
James O’Brien, Jan. 11, Email exchange with USA TODAY
DocumentCloud (USA TODAY), Jan. 12, Trump Epstein Plane High Res Hive
DocumentCloud (USA TODAY), Jan. 12, Trump Epstein Plane High Res Illuminarty
DocumentCloud (USA TODAY), Jan. 12, Trump Epstein Plane Low Res Hive
DocumentCloud (USA TODAY), Jan. 12, Trump Epstein Plane Low Res Illuminarity
Archive Today, Jan. 12, Reverse Google Lens search
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: AI behind image of Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein on jet | Fact check
