Does a real photo accurately portray Natalie Harp smiling? No, that's not true: A real image has been altered with AI tools to elongate Harp's teeth and expose her gums. A visual comparison between the altered image and the original, as well as readings from AI-generated content detection tools, all demonstrate the image is fake.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @OurShallowState account on X on Sept. 13, 2026. It read:
Would you really be that surprised if she opened her mouth a little larger and there was an inner set of jaws with smaller teeth that pushed out and snapped, like in Alien?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @OurShallowState on X.)
A reverse image search with Google Lens (archived here) shows several photos of Harp wearing a green turtleneck dress on a Sept. 12, 2026, trip to Ireland. One photo (archived here) published by the Daily Beast on Sept. 13, 2026, appears to show the same moment pictured in the X post, with a critical difference. In the Daily Beast photo, Harp's smile is relaxed and open, with only her upper teeth showing and a minimal amount of her upper gumline exposed. The Lead Stories GIF (below) shows how the mouth in the original photo was altered, and how the chin and bottom of the nose were moved slightly to make room for the fake extra toothy smile. The alteration not only changed the expression but elongated the teeth.
(GIF source: post by @OurShallowState on X and article in The Daily Beast.)
Lead Stories uploaded the altered image to Hive Moderation (archived here). The AI-Generated Content Detection Tool found the input was 99.9% likely to be AI-generated (pictured below).
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Lead Stories uploaded the image to the OpenAI Verify tool (archived here) which detected a SynthID watermark, indicating the image was altered with OpenAI's tools (pictured below).
(Image source: OpenAI.)
