Overview
- False photos surged across social platforms after Melania Trump’s April 9 statement denying ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and new Snopes reports on Monday and Tuesday detail why the images do not hold up.
- Snopes on Tuesday identified a viral shot of Ghislaine Maxwell appearing to grab Melania Trump’s chest as a manipulated version of a real 2000 party photo, with the tell being Maxwell’s original hand still visible behind her coat holding a bottle.
- A multi-image collage reviewed Monday was found to be fabricated, including a kissing image that carried Google’s Gemini logo in an uncropped version and a tool message confirming AI editing.
- Another widely shared party photo of Melania Trump with a cup between Epstein and a woman tested positive for Google’s SynthID watermark, while X’s Grok assistant wrongly told a user it “looks real,” boosting the hoax before debunks spread.
- Several fakes trace to known sources, including a staged Alison Jackson lookalike image labeled fictional and a Tom Adelsbach parody built from a DOJ-released photo, illustrating how authentic archives and art get repurposed to mislead.