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IMAGES APPEARING TO show members of An Garda Síochána being turned away from restaurants and cafés during the recent fuel price protests, alongside detailed accounts of this happening, have appeared on social media recently.
A Facebook account this week posted an image appearing to show gardaí walking out of a restaurant as customers stand and applaud or record with their phones.
“Garda being refused service in Galway and asked to leave the premises as 4 members of the Garda walked in to a restaurant three males and a woman, the place went quiet with other customers and staff looking at them,” the post read.
The image is AI-generated. At a glance, it may appear authentic, but there are multiple tells that it is not.
The restaurant it is supposed to show, “The Quays Bistro” in Galway, does not exist. There is a pub called The Quays in Galway city though.
Also, the business across the street is simply called “Galway”. It also does not exist.
Then there are details of the rending of the people in the image.
As is often the case with AI-generated images of people, there are issues with the depiction of hands. See below how the man in the apron’s left hand is missing fingers.
“One of these images uses Garda in outdated uniforms that are no longer worn,” a Garda spokesperson told The Journal.
But the most obvious sign that the image is not a photograph is the Google Gemini logo in the bottom right corner. Gemini is Google’s AI model.
The Facebook user who posted the image acknowledged in the comments section that the image is not real and is instead “a visual representation of the post by Mitch Wood regarding events in Galway”.
Many of the comments under the post complain that it is “disingenuous” to use an artificial image in this way.
The post has 1,300 likes and reactions,almost 350 comments and over 1,000 shares.
One of the Facebook users who shared the post was Christopher Duffy, one of the protest leaders.
As well as there being no media reports of this happening, a Garda spokesperson told The Journal they had received “no such reports”. In fact, Galway Beo published an article about how it did not, in fact, happen.
An Instagram post from Tuesday also showed what appears to be a sign in a café that reads: “Off-duty? We serve the public, not the patrol. No Garda.”
The sign has apparently been put up by a café called “The Daily Grind Cafe”, and while there are a number of coffee shops with that name in Ireland, none bear any resemblance to the image in the Instagram post.
The user, kinghurleyfella, claimed: “Lots of cafés have put these up.”
The post has more than 750 likes.
The trend of falsifying reports of gardaí being asked to leave restaurants has not been propagated by AI images alone, but several apparently baseless stories have also been shared online.
One story posted on 12 April which closely matches the fake AI image doing the rounds has been reposted over 7,000 on X. The individual who posted the story about gardaí allegedly being declined service refused to name the restaurant despite being asked to do so.
The same story, word for word, was posted on Facebook later the same day by a user based in Manchester, England. The story is exactly the same but the only difference in the text is the first line, which reads: “Galway knows.”
That post received almost 8,000 like and reactions, more than 1,000 comments and was shared more than 1,600 times.
When asked about these accounts of gardaí being turned away from cafés and restaurants, a spokesperson for An Garda Síochána said:
“It is not possible for An Garda Síochána to verify the thousands of interactions its members have with the public on a daily basis.
“In general, An Garda Síochána has no such reports.”
The fuel price protests have provided plenty of fertile ground for people to propagate misinformation and outright lies. This is a common occurrence during emergencies, crises and times of social unrest.
The accounts that posted this baseless story about gardaí being refused service in Galway also frequently share conspiracy theory content, misinformation and AI-generated images.
The Journal has already documented a number of false claims and rumours stemming from the recent protests, including police from Northern Ireland being deployed south of the border, a hoax leaflet about government fuel rationing, and other AI-generated images.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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