FAKE: This image of Presidents Trump and Putin is inauthentic
This image on X (formerly Twitter) supposedly showing United States President Donald Trump, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and an unidentified person is FAKE.
The Amharic text accompanying the image translates to, “Today, the renowned Mineral Times reported that world leaders gathered to hear NASA’s statement that Ethiopia possesses fuel reserves sufficient for millions of years, Emerald deposits comparable in size to Mount Kilimanjaro, and abundant Uranium resources.”
PesaCheck observed several flaws in the image in question. For example, the hands of the three subjects in the image are distorted, and some microphones seem to be connected to each other with wires. These are the common features of AI-generated images.
Moreover, PesaCheck also analysed the picture using WasItAI, an AI detector tool. The finding suggests that the image under scrutiny was generated by AI, either entirely or partially, as seen in the screenshot below.
Google reverse image search only returned results from social media.
Additionally, no local or international media outlets have reported on the claim, and the outlet, identified as Mineral Times, was not found.
PesaCheck has examined an image shared on X supposedly showing US President Donald Trump, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and an unidentified person and found it to be FAKE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by a PesaCheck fact-checker based in Ethiopia (name withheld for security reasons) and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya. The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck chief copy editor, Stephen Ndegwa.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.