Is a photo that shows a small crowd reflected in mirror sunglasses from a person on stage at the Freedom 250 concert authentic? Yes, that's true: The photo that shows a small crowd reflected in mirror sunglasses of a man on stage with Celeste Kellogg at the Freedom 250 concert was posted by the Freedom 250 Facebook account on June…

Do real images show FIFA President Gianni Infantino attending two World Cup games that took place simultaneously in different cities? No, that's not true: The photos have been edited to give the appearance that he was present at two matches occurring at the same time. Instead, they show different games on different days. The claim appeared in a post and…

Is a video that shows a fan running onto a soccer field to hug Lionel Messi at the 2026 FIFA World Cup authentic? No, that's not true: An AI detection tool determined that the video was 51.7% "likely to be AI-generated." There are multiple glitches in the video that show it was made with AI. There are no credible news…

Have you seen viral clips showing people dying from "overfloating" the edge of infinity pools or from falling down from the top of the building after a collapse of the pool's transparent walls? Lead Stories has spotted a number of such videos recently and has found that many of them were created using artificial intelligence. An expert specializing in swimming…

Did Norwegian soccer player Erling Haaland scare himself when he saw his reflection in a mirror as he was eating at a restaurant? No, that's not true: The video was digitally edited with a face swap program. The original video does not show Haaland but Chinese comic Jin Long performing a skit in his signature physical comedy style. The video…

Does a video show how multiple laser beams scanned the ground in the instant before the Venezuela earthquakes struck? No, that's not true: One clip in the video was published on TikTok on March 18, 2026, months before earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24, 2026. The video had already circulated widely with a caption calling it a "converging beam event"…

Is this a real photo showing Pride rainbow flags on the field ahead of the Iran-Egypt World Cup game in Seattle on June 26, 2026? No, that's not true: The image is AI-generated, an online detection tool identified it as such by detecting a SynthID watermark. There are no credible reports that Pride flags appeared on the field before the…

Are social media posts claiming that Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, or other celebrity women wore "probably the smallest bikini In the world" real? No, that's not true: The images used in the posts were created with artificial intelligence tools and distributed on a network of fake Facebook fan pages managed from North Macedonia. These clickbait posts link to blogs filled…

Did Donald Trump post an image of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool showing him and Jeffrey Epstein together? No, that's not true: Lead Stories manually reviewed his account on Truth Social for the period between June 1 and June 26, 2026, and found no evidence to support the claim. While images of the pool have been a recurring topic among…

Does a real photo from 1903 show a "Bengali woman carrying a British trader" depicting "the height of British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent"? No, that's not true: The image is fake. OpenAI's verification tool detected the image has a SynthID watermark and was made with tools from OpenAI. There are also glitches characteristic of AI-generated images such as…