Is a photograph of Elsa Thora, a blonde woman, aboard a ship during a military operation authentic? No, that's not true: This is not a real photo. Google's Gemini detected a SynthID watermark embedded in the image indicating that all or part of it was created or edited with Google AI.
The image was posted on January 7, 2026, on X.com account @elsathora (archived here). It opened:
This is our hemisphere 🇺🇸 another successful operation
This is what the image looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/elsathora/status/2008924792712212779.)
Lead Stories uploaded the image to Google's Gemini (conversation archived here) which used the watermarking tool SynthID (archived here) ("A tool to watermark and identify content generated through AI") to determine the image was not real:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from google.com.)
Additionally, the AI-generated content detector at Hive Moderation found with 66.3 percent confidence the image was likely to be AI-generated (pictured below). It specified that Google's Gemini3 was likely the AI model which made the image.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot using image from x.com/elsathora/status/2008924792712212779 with Hive extension.)
Thora frequently posts AI-generated images of herself to promote her account. Only hours before she posted the image on the boat, she claimed to be in the U.K. seeking asylum with this image posted on her X account:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/https://x.com/elsathora/status/2008853459345580467.)
Her account bio promotes a link to a bitcoin creation website (archived here) as seen here:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from website pump.fun/coin.)
