Was an image of a Kamala Harris political rally in Detroit digitally altered to boost the size of the crowd? No, that's not true: The August 2024 campaign rally was widely covered by TV networks and other media, which showed a crowd of thousands of people, consistent with the image that was questioned. Lead Stories obtained the original digital image from the campaign's photographer, which shows the scene with greater clarity. AI detection software tools found little evidence to support the claim of digital manipulation.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X, formerly Twitter, on August 8, 2024. It opened:
So @harryjsisson has resorted to using AI generated images to pretend people support @KamalaHarris 😂
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 21:45:53 2024 UTC)
Neither the post's caption nor the narrator's analysis provided independent evidence to support the claim that AI or computer-generated imagery had been used to make the gathering appear larger.
The photograph
The picture analyzed by the narrator was originally posted on social media (archived here) by the Harris campaign. By zooming in on the image, he pointed out what he interpreted as irregularities and evidence of digital manipulation. A screenshot of his example, which appears about 28 seconds into the video, can be seen below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 23:17:03 2024 UTC)
Original photograph
The Harris campaign provided the original digital image as taken by their official photographer to Lead Stories. The red box in the larger image on the right shows the section highlighted in the video. With its greater resolution, there is better clarity when you zoom in. The images of the people appear more natural than the lower-resolution photos online appear after being processed through the social media platform:
(Source: Harris campaign photo taken on Wed Aug 7 2024 UTC)
The rally
The Harris rally took place at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport on August 7, 2024, and was widely covered by national and local media (archived here). In all cases, images and videos from the event show a large crowd. Here's a screenshot showing Harris' plane arriving at the hangar as shown live by Fox Business:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 23:41:03 2024 UTC)
Here's a separate screenshot of the crowd as shown live by the Detroit Free Press, which also shows a densely packed crowd at the airport:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 23:55:51 2024 UTC)
DeepFake-o-meter
The image in the social media post was not digitally manipulated or CGI'd. First, Lead Stories ran it through an online tool called the DeepFake-o-meter, hosted by The University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, which focuses on "the forensic analysis of digital media." The following screenshot shows the University at Buffalo findings: that the image from the rally shows no evidence of being AI-generated:
(Source: Deepfake-o-meter screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 23:58:26 2024 UTC)
Read more
Lead Stories has debunked other claims related to the 2024 presidential election, which can be read here.
