A photo has gone viral on social media that allegedly shows Vice President Kamala Harris in a bikini on a beach embracing the now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The photo was first circulated on X and then a video also appeared on TikTok wherein one user said that the photo was the truth.
Several social media users have since started believing that the photo of Harris and Epstein is real. However, the photo is completely fake and is AI generated. The claim was made to spread misinformation about the Vice President who is now running for the Presidential race against former President Donald Trump.
Weird Claim
The photo shows Harris in a bikini embracing Epstein on a beach. Many users started claiming that the photo was real. One user on X wrote: "Breaking News!! Jeffery Epstein and Kamala Harris are seen at a beach in the Bahamas. He is not dead."
Interestingly, the photo comes just days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 Presidential race and endorsed Harris as his replacement.
However, the photo is fake and AI generated. Several fact checking websites also labelled the photo fake.
Fact checking site Lead Stories used True Media, an AI detection tool, to analyze the image and found substantial evidence that it had been manipulated.
True Media's analysis showed a 100 percent confidence in AI-generated image detection and reverse search analysis, suggesting that the image was likely created using Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image AI model.
USA Today, Snopes, and other fact-checkers also confirmed that the image had been altered.
Reverse Search Also Proves Photo Is Fake
A reverse image search shows no results older than mid-July 2024, nearly five years after convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was declared dead on August 10, 2019.
In fact several fact checkers had previously debunked another digitally altered image showing the Harris and Epstein together. There is no evidence that the photo predates Epstein's death or that the two were ever photographed together.
As of this fact check, USA Today and Snopes had also reviewed and confirmed the same claim.
Hence the photo can be labelled 'fake' and the claim completely false. The claim was likely made to defame Harris or spread misinformation about the Vice President, who is currently busy campaigning for the upcoming elections in November.
