Image of Donald Trump dancing with teenager was AI generated | Fact check

Isabella Fertel, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: Photo shows Trump dancing with a young girl on Jeffrey Epstein's island in 1989

A June 13 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) includes an image of what appears to be former President Donald Trump closely holding a young blonde girl.

“Photo of Donald Trump at Epstein’s private island dancing with a 13 year old girl,” reads text in the image.

Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy hedge fund manager and frequent subject of online misinformation, was arrested in 2019, and faced federal charges for allegedly trafficking minors. He pleaded not guilty and was found dead in his jail cell about a month later.

The post was liked more than 200 times in a week. Other posts featuring the same image continue to circulate on Twitter and the meme website iFunny.

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Our rating: Altered

Multiple computer science experts told USA TODAY the image was generated by artificial intelligence. Trump's appearance in the image does not match his likeness in real footage from 1989.

Image of Trump was AI-generated

There are multiple signs the image was created using AI, according to James O'Brien, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The clear give-away is the person in the background with two extra fingers,” O’Brien told USA TODAY in an email. “The woman behind Trump has a distorted ear. It also looks like the girl’s left thumb is excessively long with some sort of projection.”

Other clues include lighting inconsistencies and Trump’s hair, which has “excessive blur” and “appears to come from nowhere” near his left ear, said O’Brien.

The problems with the AI-generated image become “more obvious” when compared to real photographs and video of Trump from 1989, he said.

V.S. Subrahmanian, a computer science professor at Northwestern University, agreed with O’Brien’s assessment and also noted the lack of consistent letter size and capitalization in the image’s text, which could indicate the text itself was AI-generated as well.

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Both O’Brien and Subrahamian told USA TODAY that fake images generated by AI are getting increasingly difficult to spot as the technology develops.

“The bottom line is that both the AI methods to generate deep fakes and the AI methods to detect deep fakes will get better over time until some kind of equilibrium is reached,” Subrahmanian told USA TODAY in an email.

Shortly after Epstein's arrest, then-President Trump said he "wasn't a fan" of Epstein and estimated the two hadn't talked for 15 years. Trump, though, did acknowledge that he knew Epstein "like everybody in Palm Beach knew him."

USA TODAY reached out to representatives for Trump and the Instagram user who shared the post for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

The Associated Press and PolitiFact also debunked this claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: AI behind image of Donald Trump dancing with teenager | Fact check