STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Not Authentic

Are two images of a scantly clad woman genuine old photos of Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting she was a sex worker in the past? No, that's not true: Harris began her professional career working in California legal offices. Inconsistencies in fingers, shadows and backgrounds in the photos are telltale signs of AI origin. The images only appeared online after Harris began her candidacy for U.S. president in the 2024 election, suggesting they were created only recently.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on August 7, 2024. The post included two images of a woman with what appeared to be Harris' face in revealing clothing. The caption of the post read:

Just so everyone knows how she got her start

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Aug 15 14:28:02 2024 UTC)

Images are not authentic

Lead Stories used reverse image search engines to learn more about the images in the post on Facebook making the claim. Our search of the darker outfit (using Google, Yandex and TinEye) and the red outfit (also using Google, Yandex and TinEye) did not generate any results that were more than a few days or weeks old. This indicates that the images were created since Harris began her candidacy for U.S. president in the 2024 election (archived here).

Based on our research, Lead Stories could not definitively prove whether the images were altered from existing photos of other people or generated by artificial intelligence. However, the characteristics of the images point to the latter.

TrueMedia's AI detection tool and an AI detection tool on Hugging Face suggested that the images are AI-generated. Screenshots of the results are included below:

(Source: TrueMedia screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 15:02:49 2024 UTC)

(Source: Hugging Face screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 14:51:47 2024 UTC)

(Source: TrueMedia screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 21:24:07 2024 UTC)

(Source: Hugging Face screenshot taken on Fri Aug 16 14:52:24 2024 UTC)

Lead Stories performed Google reverse image searches of the images and excluded Harris' face (here and here). We did not come across other images of another person wearing identical clothing, suggesting that Harris' face was not just positioned on another person's body. Similarly, we performed Google reverse image searches of just Harris' face in each of the images (here and here), which did not return any results.

Additionally, as Italian media outlet Open reported in its debunk of the images, the inconsistencies in the images are telltale signs of an AI origin. For example, in the image featuring the darker outfit, Harris' fingers are different sizes, her shadow is unnatural, and the cityscape background lacks any identifiable features such as clear signage or discernible makes of vehicles. In the image featuring the red outfit, Harris' shadow is also unusually close to her body and the image's background is obfuscated and obscure so as not to reveal where such an image would have been taken.

Kamala Harris' career

As the official White House website states (archived here), Harris, who graduated from law school in 1989 (archived here), worked in Alameda County District Attorney's Office in California beginning in 1990. Thus, if the images shown in the post on Facebook making the claim really proved how Harris "got her start," then they most likely would have made an appearance much earlier in Harris' decades-long career.

Other Lead Stories fact checks

Lead Stories debunked another claim that, based on an image, Harris was previously a sex worker. More of our fact checks related to Harris can be found here, while our fact checks on claims about the 2024 election can be found here.