Is an image of an Indiana Hoosiers fan who looks like Charlie Kirk at the football game held against the Ohio State Buckeyes on Oct. 17, 2026, real? No, that's not true: Footage from the Fox broadcast shows a person with a mustache and curly hair, not Kirk. Online tools determined that the Kirk lookalike image was highly likely to…
Is there a real video showing President Donald Trump in a mysterious cave with unidentified blond giants and unidentified personnel? No, that's not true: AI detectors determined the video was highly likely to be AI-generated, and news searches returned no matching reports from established outlets. Lead Stories previously found that similar images of Trump with tall blond figures were also…
Did authorities name Sedgwick County Deputy Sheriff Rachel Taylor as a suspect in the fatal car ramming at the Stryker Sports Complex? No, that's not true: The Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office called the claim false and said Taylor was not the driver of the vehicle. No established news outlets have reported that Taylor was a suspect, and there is no…
Does a real video show a Palestinian and Jordanian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in October 2026? No, that's not true: An online tool concluded that the video was 99.1% likely to be AI-generated and a visual inspection showed people in the video appear out of proportion to the tower's actual size. Lead Stories found no…
Did the official White House account publish a sauna picture of Donald Trump surrounded by five bare-chested men? No, that's not true: Neither the White House account nor archived copies of it showed such a post. What looked like a screenshot originated from a page that was previously identified by Lead Stories as a source of satirical content. The claim…
Is a video of an AI agent representing a job candidate during an interview by an AI recruiter real? No, that's not true: The video showing the chaos of two AI agents talking to each other during the interview was staged as a parody, according to the content creator. In an email to Lead Stories he said: "They're staged, but…
Does an image shared on social media show the Silver Rail Elementary School shooting suspect in Bend, Oregon? No, that's not true: It is a photo of an unrelated person named Hadyn Dollery, whose image was taken from a Virginia sheriff's office website. Law enforcement identified the real suspect the following day as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II. The claim…
Have you seen viral videos showing Walmart receipts compared, one old and one new? Lead Stories has spotted a number of such images recently and has found that many of them were created using artificial intelligence. They do not show real store receipts and they exaggerate how much prices have gone up in the past two decades. This article is…
Did President Donald Trump post a Truth Social message that included: 'What part of "LEAVE THE REFINERIES ALONE!" did Volodymyr Zelenskyy not understand?' No, that's not true: A review of Trump's Truth Social account found no record of the post. No established news outlets reported that his account shared the message at the time of publication. The claim appeared in…
Is U.S. Vice President JD Vance scheduled to meet Pope Leo XIV after the pontiff's surgery, as of Oct. 16, 2026? No, that's not true: The story originated as a joke from a self-described satire account. Neither Vance's official accounts nor established news outlets carried any announcement of such a visit. The claim initially appeared in a post (archived here)…
Did police name Tyler Gregory Sternbach as the Silver Rail Elementary shooting suspect in Bend, Oregon? No, that's not true: The City of Bend Police Department did not name Tyler Gregory Sternbach as the suspect in the school shooting that killed three children and one teacher on Oct. 15, 2026. The Washington Post subsequently named the suspect as John J.…
Does a real image show a man in midair after being thrown from the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia in October 2026? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found that the image came from a 2025 AI-generated reel depicting fabricated theme park collapses. The reel was posted in a Reddit community for the "Professional use of full…
Does a viral video of ships closely grouped together in a body of water actually show the Strait of Hormuz in the fall of 2026? No, that's not true: A topographic analysis matched the distinctive coastline in the video to the area around Chittagong, Bangladesh, a busy port regularly drawing large groups of vessels. Stock photos from established image databases…
Have you seen viral images showing small sleeping pods for homeless people? Lead Stories has spotted a number of such pictures and videos and has found that many of them were created using artificial intelligence. While there are some real projects aimed at providing unhoused populations with safe spaces for overnight stays by offering them such sleeping pods, the topic…
Did tech billionaire Jeff Bezos actually say that water should be prioritized for data centers over human consumption and 'Humans won't evolve humanity. AI will.'? No, that's not true: The claim originated from a self-described satire account whose profile picture mimicked the BBC logo. Lead Stories found no record of Bezos making such statements in any publicly available source. The…
Does an image show the price changes of specific items on two real Walmart shopping receipts from 2002 and 2026? No, that's not true: The receipts are not real and the images were AI-generated. The store address on the receipts does not exist -- there is no town called Sunset Bay in Florida and no Walmart at that location. The…
Does a real photo show the moment a woman wearing a "Release the Epstein files" shirt was punched by Trump supporters? No, that's not true: Two online tools concluded the image was created using AI. However, it closely resembles a real-life incident at an October 2026 Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, but the woman shown in news photos of that…
Does a real video show a woman shooting robbers from her car? No, that's not true: The clip appears to be a digital recreation of a June 2021 road rage incident in South Florida in which a man driving one car opened fire on another. The video and others like it digitally swap one person's likeness for another's, but the…
Did President Donald Trump accuse Ukraine of midterm election interference after Russian bot farm strikes? No, that's not true: The story originated on The Betoota Advocate, an Australian satirical news website. There is no evidence that Trump ever made such an accusation or issued a statement matching the claim, and no media coverage supports it. The claim appeared in an…
Did Donald Trump actually post a reply to 'Peter Girnus' who previously pretended to be a member of the Nobel Committee? No, that's not true: The screenshot displayed the wrong handle for Trump's Truth Social account -- @notRealDonaldTrump instead of @realDonaldTrump. Neither a search of his Truth Social account nor an archive of his posts showed any such reply. The…
