Did the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, wear a "Make America Mexicana Again" hat? No, that's not true: A representative from the Embassy of Mexico told Lead Stories the image was "NOT real." A reply under the social media post with the image of Sheinbaum wearing such a hat revealed that a logo of Grok, X's AI tool, had been doctored out of the original image. Also, the image purported to be of Sheinbaum showed a gap between the front teeth not visible in any genuine photos of Sheinbaum.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on January 16, 2025. The caption read:
This is hysterical.
The President of Mexico was spotted wearing a 'Make America Mexicana Again.'
🤣
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Feb 4 17:29:37 2025 UTC)
We reached out to the Mexican embassy in Washington, D.C., about the image and received an emailed response on February 4, 2025, from Sergio Aguirre, head of communications and public diplomacy:
The photo is NOT real. It is clearly made with AI.
There is no evidence that the face in the photo is Sheinbaum. To the contrary, Lead Stories noticed that Sheinbaum does not have a gap between her two front teeth, but the individual in the claim does. Below is an genuine image of Sheinbaum with no gap in her teeth:
(Source: AP News screenshot taken on Tue Feb 4 22:23:57 2025)
A Google Image search (archived here) of the picture from the claim with the keywords "President Claudia Sheinbaum" and "'Make America Mexicana Again'" yielded no evidence that the photo in the claim was a real image.
A post (archived here) underneath the claim replied with another version of the image showing that a Grok logo had been cropped out. Grok is X's AI chatbot. The AI tool also allows X users to generate images and provide coding support.
Grok's logo being present in the image shows that this was AI generated, and not a legitimate photograph. Evidence of the post on X is below; highlighting by Lead Stories:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Feb 4 19:02:20 2025 UTC)
An zoomed-in version of the Grok logo on the image is below; highlighting from Lead Stories:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Feb 4 20:50:25 2025 UTC)
Using Sightengine, a tool that detects AI generated images and deepfakes, told us that there was a 9 percent chance that the image was "not likely to be AI-generated or deepfake." Evidence of this is below:
(Source: Sightengine screenshot taken on Tue Feb 4 20:47:47 2025 UTC)
A reverse image search (archived here) of the photo showed only two images: reposts of the claim. No original images or other images of the president supposedly wearing this hat were found.
Lead Stories did not find any evidence of this photo in Sheinbaum's media galleries on her verified social media pages, Facebook, X, Instagram.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning President Claudia Sheinbaum are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Mexico are here.
