Does the image in a video on social media show the son of "Dr. Sebi" on trial for purportedly revealing "HEALTH SECRETS"? No, that's not true: The claim was made without providing names, dates, locations or other details by which to independently verify such a trial occurred or that the person shown is related to the late Alfredo "Dr. Sebi" Bowman. Multiple tools used to detect AI-generated images found evidence the image of the man in an orange prison jumpsuit in a courtroom is likely a creation of AI.
Lead Stories searched for and did not locate credible reports that would verify that Bowman's son was arrested, tried or sentenced. The claim is one of a series of previously debunked claims about supposed prosecutions of the controversial herbalist's offspring.
The claim appeared in a reel (archived here) on Facebook on April 16, 2024. The caption opened:
THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!
Black text superimposed on an image of a man in an orange jumpsuit in a courtroom read:
While everyone focuses on Diddy or the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse 🤦🏼♂️
They want to distract us from the fact that they sentenced Dr. Sebi's son to 50 years for revealing these HEALTH SECRETS 😳👉
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook.com screenshot taken on Wed Apr 24 12:20:46 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories previously found similar claims that images showing a purported son and a purported daughter of Dr. Sebi on trial were fake. These fact checks can be read here and here.
"Dr. Sebi," whose real name was Alfredo Bowman, was a Honduran man who died in 2016. He was not a licensed physician and was known for promoting disreputable herb-based products and holistic practices.
The Media Forensic Lab at the University of Buffalo provides a suite of tools that assess the likelihood an image is AI-generated.
Two of the tools found evidence of AI generation of the face in the reel post on Facebook, with the tool citing "the probability of the input being fake." The tool's findings are shown in the chart below:
(Source: DeepFake-O-Meter screenshot taken on Sat Apr 20 12:48:00:46 2024 UTC)
The Hive Moderation AI-detection tool also assessed the face in the image as "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content":
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Wed Apr 24 18:45:00:46 2024 UTC)
A Google Lens search (archived here) of the image of the man revealed similar digitally manipulated photos of different men pictured in orange jumpsuits in courtrooms with superimposed text that claims these men are "Dr. Sebi's" sons who are being sentenced for revealing "health secrets."
Lead Stories searched using keywords on Google News, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim. The post's text did not give a name or any details of a purported trial and sentencing such as location or date to facilitate narrowing a search.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks mentioning "Dr. Sebi" can be read here.
