(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) Recently, a picture of US President Trump posing with a figure wearing a red gold-rimmed uniform and long white hair went viral on social media platforms, with individual posts even receiving tens of millions of views. Some versions have three people standing next to Trump (see picture above), and some versions have only two figures in red (see picture below). While some netizens question the authenticity of the relevant pictures, many people are also curious about the identities of these "mysterious figures". Some speculate that they are "(Nordic) aliens", while others firmly believe that they are "Norwegian King's Guards".
Deutsche Welle fact check results: The relevant pictures were all generated by AI, and there is no evidence that the US official has released relevant pictures.
AI generated traces
Deutsche Welle's fact-checking team focused on the clearer version of the two figures in red and found the following illogical details:
Uniform: The gold epaulettes are significantly larger in proportion compared to the uniform; the gold embroidery patterns on the uniform are irregular and asymmetrical, especially on the man on the left.
Trees: The tree trunk next to the character’s head on the left is deformed, which is common in AI-generated images. Additionally, the tree has different types of leaves growing on it.
Background objects: If you look carefully at the trees in the background, it is not difficult to find that the leaves blend unnaturally with the white building structure behind Trump. This is one of the common flaws of AI image generators.
Compared with the picture of the version of the three characters in red, the uniforms of the characters in the two versions are obviously different. The uniforms of the three-person version lack the golden brochure.
AI tool detection results
Regarding the pictures of the two versions of the men in red, some netizens used the AI detection tool Hive Moderation to conclude that "the probability that the pictures were generated by AI is very small." Deutsche Welle used AI or Not, another common AI image detection tool, to get the opposite result: "There is an 89% probability that the image was generated by AI."
Although the results of multiple AI detection tools vary, we found that the strongest evidence comes from OpenAI's image verification tool: it identifies the image as "generated using OpenAI tools" on the grounds that it detects the SynthID watermark originating from OpenAI.
According to OpenAI, SynthID is an invisible watermark technology that embeds special markers directly into the generated image. Unlike methods that rely on file information (metadata), this kind of mark itself is part of the image, and these marks can usually still be recognized even if the image is cropped, applied with filters, compressed, and other common editing processes.
missing source
Some users who circulated the above image claimed that Trump or the White House allegedly posted the image and later deleted it. However, after reverse searching the images, we found no evidence to support this claim.
There is no record that the relevant photos ever appeared on Trump’s or the White House’s official accounts. Of all the viral posts, no user could provide verifiable screenshots to prove that the official account had uploaded the relevant images. An archived version of the purported post in question is also nowhere to be found.
The so-called “evidence” is also an AI picture
Another netizen claimed that the picture was a real photo of the Norwegian King's Guard at the White House when King Harald V of Norway visited the United States on May 15, 2018, and provided the so-called "screenshots of relevant reports from the British "Guardian"" and "other photos released by the White House" as support.
However, OpenAI's image verification tool also identified this widely circulated puzzle as "generated using OpenAI tools" for the same reason that the SynthID watermark originating from OpenAI was detected.
Deutsche Welle checked and found that the British "Guardian" had not published relevant reports. The so-called report screenshots in the picture are a typical behavior of "media spoofing" - spreading false or misleading content through the logo, layout and even the overall brand style of the "copycat" media.
In addition, the visit records of foreign leaders on the official website of the US government show that King Harald V of Norway did not make any official visit to the United States in 2018.
Moreover, the traditional uniform of the Norwegian King's Guard is a dark blue dress, green epaulettes and a wide-brimmed hat, not the "red gold-rimmed uniform + long platinum wig" claimed in some posts.
It is worth mentioning that the picture of Trump meeting with a man in red and white hair went viral just as the Pentagon released the third batch of declassified documents on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). Since the U.S. government successively disclosed relevant documents in May, the topic of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and aliens has once again aroused heated discussion.
Joscha Weber also contributed to this article.
