Does the appearance of people's hands in the "Walz's for Trump" picture confirm that the image was generated by artificial intelligence? No, that's not true: That conclusion appears to have been drawn from the examination of a low-quality version of the image that obscured some of the details present in the original post. A better-quality version of the picture does not show irregular fingers or hands and AI image detection tools found little evidence the image was generated by AI.
The story appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, and was published on September 4, 2024. The post, with circles and arrows emphasizing some hands, sarcastically suggested that the image was AI generated, and read:
Thanks to Walz's for Trump we know this is not AI at all. It's just the Walz family is genetically predisposed to having four fingers.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 19:16:39 2024 UTC)
A close look at the better-quality original picture (archived here) shows that the said irregularities are not there (click on the image to view larger):
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 19:31:09 2024 UTC)
The fact that the second from the right woman does not have her pinky finger visible does not constitute proof of a genetic disease or digital manipulation: it could be due to any one of several reasons, from position of the hand against clothes, to the angle of the camera lens relative to her hand.
On September 4, 2024, two people Lead Stories spoke to -- a spokesperson for the man who first published the image and Tim Walz's first cousin who was not in the photo but recognized members of her late brother's family in it -- did not cast doubt on the authenticity of the photo.
Previously, Lead Stories extensively tested the image on multiple AI-detection tools, but those results didn't point to AI.
On September 5, 2024, Lead Stories ran the tests again utilizing the University of Buffalo's DeepFake-o-Meter and other tools such as Hive Moderation, AI or Not, Hugging Face and Illuminarty. The results seen in the screenshots below still didn't suggest that the picture was AI generated:
(Source: DeepFake-O-Meter screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 20:32:39 2024 UTC)
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 20:16:53 2024 UTC)
(Source: AI or Not screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 20:29:44 2024 UTC)
(Source: HuggingFace screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 20:09:49 2024 UTC)
(Source: Illuminarty screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 20:13:24 2024 UTC)
Furthermore, late at night on September 4, 2024, True Media, which is a nonprofit Al-detection tool, updated its rating from "uncertain" to "little evidence of manipulation" (archived here) when the photo was reviewed by a human analyst.
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Tim Walz can be found here. Stories about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
