How fake images traveled around the world in a matter of hoursPublished on August 19th at 5:30pm in the UK Summer
Richard Irvine Brown
The BBC examines journalists
We previously reported how we know an image that is intended to show that the leader waiting in the White House is a fake generated by AI.
We have also looked at how the image will spread – shared by users all over the world. Put it in Google's image search function and it returned hundreds of results. We received our first 250 shares from them – there was more than that.
The earliest copy of the images we saw was posted by the Dutch X account on Monday afternoon, during UK time, while the post with the most views received 1.3 million views.
The most viewed copy of everything we saw was posted in the evening and was eventually seen 2.2 million times, leading to a wave of posts over the next hour.
Those who share it have posted mocking captions across Twitter and Telegram in languages that include English, German, Italian, Belarusian, Russian, French, Arabic and Polish. This added another 1.7 million views.
It began around 7pm with a discrepancy community confirming the facts with the telegrams in Ukraine, and the post began pointing out that it was a generative AI. These include posts by Ukrainian channels Trukha and Insider UA, which totaled 1 million views.
Russian telegram accounts, including military commentators, Prokremlin bloggers and Breaking News channels, pointed out that AI is being generated for over half a million users. Meanwhile, conservative political accounts about X began to share with the approvals it was generated.
From 8:00 to 22:00, the most viewed and shared copies we've seen were dominated by people who posted fact checks and verifications. Among those who posted was Marek Magierowski, a former Polish ambassador to the US and Israel. He states:
