Does a photo on Facebook actually show rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs seated next to former President Donald Trump and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as the two men snuggle with young women? No, that's not true: A previous fact check by Lead Stories determined that another version of the photo that did not include Combs was likely AI-generated. In this latest rendition of the fake photo, Combs' left hand has six blurry fingers -- a telltale sign of an AI-manipulated image.
The claim about the photo was shared in a post on Facebook on April 12, 2024 (archived here), with a caption that read:
Bible Study!
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Apr 19 17:56:01 2024 UTC)
The image above was first circulated on social media in 2023, but did not depict Combs. That photo, posted by @tolums1 (archived here) on X, formerly Twitter, on May 8, 2023, showed the likenesses of Trump and Epstein, seated between two smiling young women on a couch. You can see the image below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue May 09 21:17:23 2023 UTC)
A previous analysis by Lead Stories, published on May 9, 2023, examined the image and concluded that the image was likely AI-generated. We reported that:
[A] reverse image search with TinEye, Yandex, and Bing does not return any copies of this image from an earlier time. All copies returned by Google were posted on Twitter since May 7, 2023. If this photo was authentic, it would have value to tabloid media -- and for the photo to suddenly become public without any explanation is a clue that it is a 2023 fabrication. The image also appears in another form posted on Twitter (archived here) with a stronger color saturation...
Examining the image with human eyes shows some clear deficits in the scene, most notably the absence of Epstein's legs, a head at the back of the couch, and an inexplicable number of hands at Epstein's shoulder. Some of the hands have the characteristic AI malformations that were present in recent versions of Midjourney.
Signs of AI manipulation remain clear in the latest version of this image, which includes a likeness of Combs. For one, the rapper's left hand appears to have six blurry fingers -- a well-established tipoff that AI created the likeness.
(Source: Lead Stories compilation from Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Apr 19 17:56:01 2024 UTC)
Combs recently made headlines worldwide after March 2024 searches of his residences in Los Angeles and Miami in connection with a U.S. federal investigation into allegations against the rapper involving sex trafficking, sexual assault and illegal firearms and narcotics.
Other fact checks of claims related to Combs can be found here.
