Donald Trump being arrested by police: real or AI?

As shared

A man with blond hair in a dark suit being held by a crowd of police officers in a street.

AI image made with Midjourney, prompted by Eliot Higgins (2023), via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain in the US (AI-generated) · Source

AI-MADE

A machine made this.

How sure we areVery high

Based on 2 strong and 0 supporting pieces of evidence.

What we found

This picture shows a man who looks like Donald Trump being grabbed and pulled down by several police officers, some in riot gear. Eliot Higgins, the founder of the investigative group Bellingcat, made it with the AI image tool Midjourney. He posted a series of these pictures on Twitter on 20 March 2023, while news outlets were waiting to see whether Trump would be charged. In his own post he said openly that they were AI pictures. They were then shared widely by other people without that explanation. Wikimedia Commons keeps this picture in its series of AI-made pictures of Trump's arrest, and records Midjourney as the maker and Higgins as the person who wrote the prompt. When a dramatic news photo appears before any news outlet has reported the event, wait for confirmation before sharing it.

Key facts

Original source: AI image made with Midjourney, prompted by Eliot Higgins (2023), via Wikimedia Commons
First published: Not recorded
Earlier appearances: Not recorded
The claim you saw: No caption recorded
Signs of AI: Yes. Shown below, but not what decided it

The evidence, strongest first

Strong Decides the answer

The maker says soEliot Higgins's own post on X (Twitter), 20 March 2023, saying he made the pictures with Midjourney↗Original sourceWikimedia Commons file page recording the source and creator↗

Supporting Points the same way

None.

Weak Shown, not relied on

How it looksLook at the officers rather than the man in the middle. Several faces are smeared or only half formed, the hands grabbing at him have the wrong number of fingers, and the badges and uniform lettering are meaningless shapes. No such arrest had taken place when the picture appeared.

Detector scores are often wrong, so they never decide a verdict here.

What we couldn’t establish

Exactly how it was made, and with which prompts, beyond what the sources above say. If you know more, tell us.

Bottom line

Made by AI: the maker says so.

See the original ↗Think we’re wrong?

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