Did a U.K. teacher with the name "Ze Berry" actually refuse to teach students who came to school dressed as Harry Potter and Dobby the Elf? No, that's not true: The story was initially published by a meme page. Two online detectors identified the image of "Ze Berry" as AI-generated.
The story originated from a post (archived here) on Facebook published on March 5, 2026. It read:
⚠️ A primary school teacher from Batley has caused uproar today after they refused to teach two 9 year olds who had dressed up as Harry Potter characters for World Book Day! 😲
Ze Berry who does not use conventional pronouns and uses 'Ze' instead, says were physically SICK after seeing the two pupils walk into the classroom who were dressed as Harry Potter and Dobbie The Elf. 🤢
Despite parents of the children saying it was an insane overreaction, Ze Berry stood by her decision and said;
'JK Rowling is a transphobic bigot and any character she has created therefore has transphobic undertones which are not tolerated in the classroom.' ✋️
The Mayor Of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin has lept to the teacher's defence and stated;
'Teachers should feel safe in the classroom. Ze Berry's actions were justified.' 🏳️🌈
The post included an image of the supposed "Ze Berry". This is what it looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by "Humans of Dewsbury" group from Facebook.)
The description of the group (archived here) that was first to publish the story:
The BEST and Funniest Memes about Dewsbury and West Yorkshire 👍😅
Searches across Google News for the supposed teacher's name (archived here) and the quote attributed to West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin (archived here) showed no media reports about the purported incident.
Contrary to the claim, Brabin (archived here) wrote (archived here) on X on March 11, 2026:
Guys calm down.... This is AI! 🙄
Two online AI detectors -- Hive Moderation and AI or Not -- said that the image from the post was over 95% likely to have been created with generative AI:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
(Image source: AI or Not.)
When accessed from Europe by Lead Stories staff, the post reviewed in this fact check was marked as "AI info". Social media users in the U.S. did not see that label:
(Image source: Facebook.)
A Meta page (archived here) that discusses the company's transparency about the automatic application of the label on organic posts doesn't appear to have a clear answer addressing the discrepancy. In part, it read:
Content with signals we can identify indicating that it was created with AI will be labeled AI info. Content with signals indicating that it was modified using AI will not have the AI info label directly on the post... Meta may require an AI label when content has photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created, modified or altered, including with AI. This requirement does not apply to images. However, images may still receive a label if the systems detect that they were AI-generated or if they were modified using AI.
