Does a viral image authentically show several European leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen sitting on chairs in a White House corridor? No, that’s not true: The image did not appear on any news sites. It contained glitches and discrepancies typical of AI generated images and at least one detection tool found signs of deepfake content.
One example of the image could be seen in an X post (archived here) where it was published on August 18 with a caption that read:
Humiliated and insulted in the White House corridor. Waiting for the master.
This is what the image looked like:
Image source: screenshot of @SprinterObserve post on X
A reverse image search (archived here) brought up a higher quality version of the image (archived here) but no copies published by reputable news websites:
Image source: screenshot of @Greg4Patriot post on X.com
It is obvious the image isn’t quite right just by looking at it: Macron’s shoes look different from each other, there seems to be an extra pair of legs/feet between him and von der Leyen and the chandeliers look decidedly different from each other, with one sprouting random crystals off to the side.
Image source: collage created by Lead Stories
AI detection tool Hive said it was 99.7 likely the image contained AI-generated or deepfake content.
Image source: Hive AI detection tool results
