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…

Does a photo show a police officer who reportedly shot a rabbi during a shooting in Montreal in late June 2026? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that the woman in the image is a member of the Montreal police; she is Dasha Nekrasova, an American actress, filmmaker, and podcast co-host. Additionally, the shooting victim was not a…

Have you seen viral videos showing people making Indian street food using their feet or other body parts or pouring dirty water in it? Lead Stories has spotted a number of such clips recently and has found that many of them were created using artificial intelligence. Often the goal of such videos is to generate engagement on social media by…

Does a video show two towers crashing into each other during the Venezuela earthquakes on June 24, 2026? No, that's not true: An AI detection tool determined that the video was 98.6% "likely to be AI-generated" and appears to be a 3D physics simulation or computer-generated imagery (CGI) effect. In addition, the exaggerated physics of the two buildings leaning into…

Do real, clear images show a person wanted in connection to the "destruction" of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, known as the "Reflecting Pool Dipper"? No, that's not true: The images, while based on real footage, are enhanced with artificial intelligence, and therefore are not reliable in identifying the person in question. The real, blurry footage was posted online by…