Is a photo that shows Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders with tape on their phones real? No, that's not true: Three online tools determined the collage of the six world leaders was AI-generated. A visual clue shows the phones all have the same unrealistically simple duct tape across the camera lens.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @defense_civil25 account on X on Nov. 11, 2026. It read:
🚨Question: @grok Why do world leaders cover their phone cameras? And what exactly are they protecting themselves from?? Should I do that too??
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @defense_civil25 on X.)
The image shows (from top left to top right) Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, (from bottom left to bottom right) French President Emmanuel Macron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Three online detection tools determined the image was likely generated with AI. Hive Moderation concluded that the collage of the six world leaders was 98.5% likely to contain AI-generated content:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Sightengine concluded the collage was 97% likely AI-generated.
(Image source: Sightengine.)
One more tool, SynthID Detector (archived here), detected a SynthID watermark, an invisible watermark developed by Google DeepMind. According to the tool, the image "was made or edited with OpenAI."
(Image source: SynthID.)
A visual clue indicating the image was generated with AI is the grey or black duct tape used on all the phones. The tape is torn on the edges -- an unrealistically basic covering for a world leader's phone camera lens.
Netanyahu was photographed in January 2026 with tape over the lens of his cell phone. However, the tape was not silver duct tape -- it was a bright red tamper-evident sticker, according to Hypefresh (archived here).
(Image source: Hypefresh.)
