CLAIM: An image shows former President Donald Trump dancing with a teenage girl at a party at Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Trump’s campaign and an expert on synthetic images say the image isn’t real. The visual has the telltale signs of one made using programs powered by generative artificial intelligence.
THE FACTS: Social media users are claiming they’ve found new evidence of misconduct by the former Republican president.
Many are sharing an image that appears to show Trump dancing with a young girl at a party years earlier. Wearing a dark suit and tie, Trump appears to clutch the blonde-haired girl in a red dress as people mill around in the background.
“Photo of Donald Trump at Epstein’s private island dancing with a 13 year old girl,” the text superimposed over the photo reads, referring to the disgraced financier who killed himself in a New York City jail while facing federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges in 2019.
“Trump was in his 50s when this was taken,” the text on some of the images adds. “What kind of man does that?”
Some posts even juxtapose the image with actual footage of Trump and Epstein chatting animatedly at a gathering. The text of the clip says it’s from November 1992 in Palm Beach, Florida and shows the two “discussing women.”
But while Trump was at one point among the many powerful associates Epstein amassed over the years, the picture of Trump with the young girl is fake, according to his campaign and an outside expert.
Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics, misinformation and image analysis, said the image has many of the hallmarks of a fake likely created using generative AI.
He noted a man standing in the background appears to have six fingers grasped around his glass. Generative AI programs, while increasingly sophisticated, are notoriously bad at properly rendering hands and fingers.
Farid also noted a slight inconsistency in the reflection in the girl’s eyes. Her left eye clearly shows a specular reflection, but her right eye does not, he said.
Other giveaways include the girl’s right forearm and hand, which appears elongated and misshapen as it disappears into Trump’s underarm, Farid said. It also does not match the more tanned skin tone of the rest of her arm.
Social media sleuths noted still other AI-generated tells, such as the overly shiny and smooth skin and hair texture on both Trump and the girl, which gives them an almost cartoonish quality.
Raina Saboo, head of business at Optic, also said the image was made using AI, not a camera, based on analysis by the San Francisco-based company’s “AI or Not” image detection tool. She said the program noted color and brightness variances in the visual that aren’t necessarily perceptible to the human eye.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, also confirmed the image was a forgery. He accused the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — which has previously shared a fabricated image of Trump embracing Anthony Fauci — of spreading the visual.
DeSantis’ campaign rejected the notion. “This has nothing to do with us and isn’t from us,” said spokesperson Bryan Griffin.
___
This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
