Does a photo show "Halach Boome," a real pilot from the Israeli Air Force who took out Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? No, that's not true: An online detection tool rated the image as 100% likely to be AI-generated, and it contains a watermark from an AI image generator. Additionally, the name given to the supposed pilot appears to…
Is a video of Donald Trump with blindfolded children that claims to have come "out of the Epstein files" real? No, that's not true: There is no record of an image or video showing President Trump with blindfolded children with Jeffrey Epstein. The video is a mashup of footage of Trump and Epstein and children that appears to be AI-generated.…
Does a real video show Iranian rockets coming in at a tremendous speed, exploding targets near the Tel Aviv marina? No, that's not true: This video is fake and bears many of the hallmarks of AI-generated imagery. The video is represented as showing Tel Aviv, Israel, but the marina does not look like the waterfront of that city. There is…
Does a video actually show the moment "when Iran destroyed the US Navy fleet in Bahrain"? No, that's not true: The viral clip, which purported to show that, originated from an account that disclosed it was AI-generated. It also contained glitches typical of AI-generated video. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on March 4, 2026.…
Does a video show a nuclear test carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran? No, that's not true: The video clip shows a nuclear test in the Nevada desert in 1957. The mislabeled video clip bears the watermark of the YouTube channel @atomcentral who posted the old footage of the atomic test in 2023. The mislabeled…
Is this picture showing the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia on fire after a drone attack real? No, that's not true: An online detection tool rated the image 99.7% likely to be AI-generated and it contained a watermark from an AI image generator. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defense did say there was "limited fire and minor material damage to the…
Does a viral clip prove that Iran sank the American aircraft carrier "Abraham Lincoln" involved in the military operation in the region? No, that's not true: The U.S. military denied the rumors twice. No credible media organizations reported the purported news and there were no higher quality versions of the clip or different angles available. The claim appeared in a…
Is this a real image released by Iran of Supreme Leader Khamenei's body being pulled from under rubble by rescue workers? No, that's not true: According to Google's Gemini tool the image contains a SynthID watermark indicating it was generated in whole or in part using AI. The image in question did not appear on any Iranian websites according to…
Did Waffle House announce plans to put floating restaurants on lakes across the southeastern United States to serve boaters, anglers, and waterfront homes? No, that's not true: A Waffle House official told Lead Stories there were no such plans. An image of a floating Waffle House in the middle of a lake, surrounded by boats, was generated by an artificial…
Does a viral image document Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney dining with Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite convicted of sex trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein? No, that's not true: The image displayed a watermark pointing to a generative AI tool. Several details in the picture, such as missing temples of a person's glasses or an earring incorrectly attached to an…
Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
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