Does an authentic image show Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Deport Elon Musk"? No, that's not true: This is not a genuine photograph. The picture bears a small "Grok" watermark in the lower right-hand corner, a label indicating that it was created using an AI program. Additionally, the tools at TrueMedia.org determined that the image was 96 percent likely to have been AI-generated.
The image appeared in a post (archived here) published on Bluesky on January 12, 2025.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Bluesky screenshot taken on Mon Jan 13 15:51:13 2025 UTC)
A "Grok" watermark is shown in the image's lower right corner. Grok is a tool from Elon Musk's xAI, an AI program that was gradually rolled out (archived here) on the X platform in 2023. A timeline of release dates shows December 9, 2024, when the Grok image generation model became available on the X social media platform.
The announcement (archived here) reads:
Grok Image Generation Release
We updated Grok's capabilities with a new autoregressive image generation model, code-named Aurora, available on the 𝕏 platform.
Lead Stories uploaded this image for review using a collection of analysis tools at TrueMedia.org. The final verdict (pictured below) shows "substantial evidence of manipulation."
(Source: TrueMedia.org screenshot taken on Mon Jan 13 20:16:02 2025 UTC)
The TrueMedia.org results (archived here) include a "Universal Fake Detector Analysis," which determined with 96 percent confidence (pictured below right) that the image was generated with an AI model.
(Source: TrueMedia.org screenshot taken on Mon Jan 13 20:16:02 2025 UTC)
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Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving Bernie Sanders or Elon Musk can be found here and here.
