At the end of January 2024, a photograph of the US President sitting in a meeting room wearing camouflage clothing went viral on the Internet. We decided to check the authenticity of this photo.
In the photo, in addition to Biden, other people in military uniform are sitting at the table, and in the background a screen with a picture of a certain map is visible. Many sources note that the picture was taken in the situation center, and the meeting participants were discussing a possible US military operation in the Middle East. Some people published photos informational portals (for example NewsFront, IA "Anti-fascist" And "Donpress"), entertaining resources, social network users (“VKontakte", X) and blogging platforms (“Zen", LiveJournal). The photo was also posted in many popular Telegram channels: “Sheikh Tamir"(128,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Politjoystic" (127,000), "Tucker Carlson for Russia"(65,000), etc.
Photos from the purported meeting began circulating after three U.S. service members were killed and 25 wounded in an attack on January 28. attacks drone on a military base located in northeast Jordan, near the border with Syria. Same day Biden statedthat such actions will not go unanswered.
A random person or paparazzi clearly could not have captured the discussion of a possible military operation in the Middle East. However, if you find a photo in any official sources (for example, on the website White House, US Department of Defense, social networks President) or in photo banks of reputable media failed.
The earliest publications with a photo being analyzed that “Verified” was able to find were posted simultaneously on January 30, 2024 at 01:03 Moscow time in Russian-language Telegram channels “Conflict Z"(6000 views), "Crimean Front" (585), "There is strength in truth" (380) and "Svyatogorsk is ours!"(283). All of these posts contained the same accompanying text: “Biden is right now in a meeting with the country's top military leadership. He is dressed in military uniform." After just a minute publications with this photo and similar text appeared in a number of other pro-Russian Telegram channels. It is extremely unlikely that the administrators of several small Russian-language channels could simultaneously gain access to a photo from a military meeting in the United States that had not previously been published in any media or official source.
Project fact checkers Lead Stories checked the image using Hive Moderation — a service for detecting content generated by neural networks. The analysis showed that with a 99.9% probability the image being distributed was created by artificial intelligence (most likely with the help of Midjourney). “Verified” when uploading a photo to Hive Moderation received a similar result.
Author of several books on artificial intelligence Luke Brox X also noted on his page that the image was most likely created using AI. The expert generated and attached to his tweet several more similar photos with Biden in military uniform, which looked just as believable as the one being analyzed.
Thus, the photograph in question is not in any official source or in any reputable media, although it could have been taken by a very limited circle of people from among the military, press service employees or journalists allowed to cover military meetings at the highest level. The fact that the earliest publications discovered by “Verified” were made simultaneously in several Russian-language Telegram channels, whose administrators clearly could not be present at this event, indicates a coordinated campaign to disseminate the image. Specialized services and neural network experts believe that the image was created using AI.
Cover photo: Telegram channel "Conflict Z»
Read on the topic:
- Lead Stories. Fact Check: Image Of President Biden In Military Fatigues Is NOT Real – AI Detection Tool Says It's 100 Percent Fake
- A very strange movie: Z-channels spent months talking about a fake documentary with Tom Cruise about corruption in the IOC, but the series never became a global sensation
- Is the photo in which Biden put his hand on Zelensky’s buttocks true?
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