Using AI-created or manipulated images, social media users have sought to falsely associate prominent US politicians such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, researchers said Tuesday.
Disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said seven such images collectively garnered more than 21 million views on the Elon Musk-owned platform X alone, underscoring how tech-enabled false narratives on social media are increasingly blurring the line between fact and fiction.
The Justice Department last week released the latest cache of so-called Epstein files — more than three million documents, photos and videos related to its investigation into Epstein, who died from what was determined to be suicide while in custody in 2019.
The Epstein affair has entangled some of the most high-profile global figures, from Britain’s former prince Andrew to renowned American intellectual Noam Chomsky and Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit.
Mamdani and former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley are not among them.
However, conservative social media users circulated three images that purported to show Epstein posing with Mamdani, who appears as a child. Two of them also depict Mira Nair, the mayor’s mother who is an award-winning filmmaker.
The images are AI-generated fakes, NewsGuard said.
The watchdog cited a review of the images using Google’s artificial intelligence tool Gemini, which detected a SynthID, an invisible watermark meant to identify AI content.
In a post on X that racked up more than 1.5 million views, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones featured one of those images and claimed that Musk’s AI chatbot Grok had called it real.
Disinformation researchers have long voiced concern about the unreliability of AI chatbots as a fact-checking tool.
– Online fakery –
Also circulating on social media was a screenshot of an email purportedly sent by Haley — a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador — to Epstein.
“I have 2 babies with me. Can you arrange a flight for me? Can’t leave them at home,” the screenshot quoted Haley as writing.
But a search of the purported email in the Justice Department’s files did not yield any results.
The screenshot also contained other indications that it was fabricated, including the date of the purported email — January 7, 2014, was a Tuesday, not a Saturday, as shown.
Haley did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
In a post on X last July, she urged President Donald Trump’s administration to “release the Epstein files and let the chips fall where they may.”
Separately, Latin American social media users shared an image purportedly showing Epstein seated next to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado at the annual Hampton Classic Horse Show in the United States in 2002.
Using a reverse-image search, NewsGuard determined that the image was a digitally altered version of a photo showing Epstein with a billionaire American businessman.
Online fakery has previously sought to ensnare other leading politicians in the Epstein scandal.
Last year, as Mark Carney became a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, social media images purported to show him with Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
AFP’s fact-checkers reported that the images bore strong indicators they were AI-generated.
