Image of Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein on private jet is AI generated | Fact check   Story by Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY • 21h USA TODAY

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The claim: Image shows Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein on a private jet

Social network: Donald Trump, former President of the United States. Trump and Epstein were neighbors in Palm Beach in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump threw Epstein a 'calendar girl' party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 1992, according to the New York Times.© Alex Brandon, AP

Jan. 8 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) purports to show former President Donald Trump sitting on a plane beside disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is a picture of two guys on a private jet, going to a private island, that didn’t know each other,” reads the post.

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It was shared more than 700 times in four days.

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Our rating: Altered

The image is a fabrication. It was generated by artificial intelligence, according to computer science experts and AI-detection tools.
AI-generated image shows Epstein with three legs, wedding ring

The image has appeared on social media since at least May 2023, a reverse image search found. It circulated online again in early January with the unsealing of court filings related to a lawsuit against Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein's co-conspirator in a scheme to exploit and sexually abuse minors.
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Earlier versions of the image have a different look and feel, with the original, high-resolution version containing more detail than the grainy one in the latest Facebook post.

“Both images depict the same scene, but the lower quality one likely went through a style model to make it appear rasterized, and hence ‘older,’” Walter Scheirer, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told USA TODAY in an email.

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