At the end of May 2025, a photo allegedly taken in one of the French gyms went around the Internet. It shows an advertising poster for self-defense courses “for those who are beaten by their wife” with a portrait of the country’s president. We have verified the authenticity of this photo.
The photo shows the door to the gym with an advertising poster hanging on it. In it, French President Emmanuel Macron covers a bruise on his face with his palm. The caption reads: “Is your wife beating you? Sign up for a self-defense course.” It is alleged that such a poster appeared in one of the French gyms shortly after the incident involving Macron and his wife Brigitte. May 26th went viral video, which shows the first lady of France pushing her husband in the face before they get off the plane in Vietnam. Macron himself, after the uproar, said that it was a joke: he and his wife were “fooling around, as they often do.”
The photo was distributed by Russian (“RIA Novosti», "Arguments and facts") and foreign media (LaPresse, "Ukrainian national news"), as well as large Telegram channels, including "Dmitry Nicotin"(343,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Solovyov"(222,000), "Creative with an asterisk"(157,000), "Irena Ponaroshku" (112,000) and "Heavenly"(102,000).
The incident in Vietnam caused a great stir. Not only journalists, but also officials from different countries reacted to the video with the participation of the Macron couple - for example, the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova jokingly suggestedthat it was the hand of the Kremlin. Cartoonists also paid attention to the embarrassment.
As for the viral photo allegedly taken at the entrance to a French gym, its authenticity is questionable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it has not received any widespread distribution in French-language sources. The largest coverage (about 4000 views in total) is from post a user of the social network X with the username @xinfolive, distributing pro-Russian content and having his own page on VKontakte. Second most viewed in English in X (70,000) tweet posted by Irish publicist and employee of the Russian state news agency RT Chey Bowes. This cannot be compared with the almost two million reach in the Russian-language segment of Telegram alone. It is noteworthy that major Western media (for example, the British tabloid Daily Mail) if they talked about the photo, they called it an Internet fake.
Secondly, the chronology of the appearance of publications in different languages is eloquent. Tweet @xinfolive is the earliest in French, it was posted on May 27 at 13:29 Moscow time. With English commentary before anyone else photo shared by user @farnakyboy (May 26 at 21:35) - his page also consists almost entirely of pro-Russian publications, and he often writes comments in Russian. The photo appeared on Russian-language social networks much earlier—it was first posted by the Telegram channel “Kryminforum🇿 🇴 🇻» May 26 at 15:23 Moscow time. Previously he had already featured in analyzes “Verified” as the primary source of disinformation related to Western politicians.
Note that the scandalous video with Macron began to circulate after 9 am, that is, just a few hours before the first publication of the viral photo from the gym. But during this time the poster had to be invented, drawn, printed, placed on the door and photographed. At the same time, only one frame of this poster is being circulated, although it could and should have attracted the attention of many visitors. It is impossible to determine where exactly this photo was taken - there are no identifying marks in the photo; it could be a gym anywhere in the world.
“Verified” was unable to reliably determine how exactly this image was created. It was probably (at least partially) generated by AI, but specialized detectors give conflicting results: some detected traces of the neural network, others did not see anything suspicious in the picture.
Another option is to use a photo editor, but the available “Verified” image analysis methods do not allow you to give a definite answer. However, based on the above arguments, it is unlikely that the photo was taken in a real gym.
Thus, the history of the distribution of the photograph from the French gym suggests that it actually appeared in the Russian-language segment of the Internet and, at a minimum, does not correspond to its description. Analysis using digital techniques shows that the image may have been generated in whole or in part by AI.
Cover photo: social networks
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