Was an image of an August 6, 2024, Kamala Harris campaign rally at Pennsylvania's Temple University digitally altered to fake its crowd size? No, that's not true: Photos and videos of the event by numerous media outlets match the crowd size seen in the picture, including Lead Stories' own photos. An AI-detection tool found little evidence that the image of the rally posted on X had been altered using AI.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on August 9, 2024. It said:
Kamala Harris is so unpopular that they have to use AI to fake crowd sizes on TV for her rallies
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X post screenshot taken on Wed Aug 21 20:42:55 2024 UTC)
Numerous reliable media outlets such as The Daily Pennsylvania, KARE and CNN took photos and videos that match the crowd size observed in the image posted on X.
A staff member of Lead Stories was present at the rally and shot the photo below, showing the same crowd size as in the post on X:
(Source: Lead Stories photo taken on Tue Aug 6 21:59:25 2024 UTC)
The image is a wide-angle picture, allowing a wider field of view, which makes nearby objects appear bigger than reality and objects farther away appear smaller.
The AI detector used in the post on X, aiimagedetector.org, says in its "AI Image Detector Frequently Asked Questions" section that it "has a high accuracy rate, but no detection method is 100% foolproof" and that "accuracy can vary depending on the complexity and quality of the image."
Lead Stories ran the image through TrueMedia, another AI-detection tool, which is currently in beta testing. In five of its six categories, it found "little evidence" of AI manipulation. These were the results:
(Source: TrueMedia screenshot taken on Thu Aug 22 19:31:28 2024 UTC)
At the time of writing, AFP had reviewed the same claim about the Harris rally.
Lead Stories has debunked multiple false claims about the digital manipulation of Kamala Harris' campaign images, such as here, here, here, here and here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Kamala Harris can be found here. Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Tim Walz can be found here.
