PICTURES THAT APPEAR to show the deceased child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein speaking to the President of the European Commission are AI-generated.

The supposed photo shows Epstein speaking into the ear of Ursula von der Leyen at a black-tie event.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex crimes against children. He died in a prison cell later that year while awaiting trial.

Versions of the fake photo that have spread online have written details in the corner, including a “dossier number” and a “document number”, both of which include the numbers 2012, a suggestion that the files are from, or were found, that year.

The written details also say “Source: Fichiers Epstein”. This translates from French to “Epstein files”.

The fake photo.

The fake image has been posted dozens of times on Facebook where it has accumulated more than a thousand shares.

It has also been shared on Instagram, TikTok, and X, where one version of the image has been viewed more than 244,000 times.

The posts are often accompanied by conspiracy theories, or baseless suggestions that the image is proof that politicians like von der Leyen and others are implicated in Epstein’s crimes.

For example, a 2 September post on X says von der Leyen is “Another WEF member. Also close with Mark Carney!” referring to the Canadian prime minister.

“Mark Carney’s wife’s sister was childhood friends with Maxwell and Epstein,” it claims.

(There is no evidence of this, though Maxwell was once photographed at a public event next to the couple).

“Mark Carney’s circle loves pedophile, baby killers” [sic] the post ends.

That X post was viewed more than 244,000 times.

But the photo that appears to show Epstein with von der Leyen is not real.

Using a tool provided by AI company OpenAI, a “SynthID” was found on the image. The SynthID is an invisible, digital watermark purposely added by some AI image generators so that their creations can be readily identified.

This is not the first time an image of Epstein was spread widely online before being shown to be an AI-generated fake.

Earlier this year, The Journal debunked images that appeared to show that Epstein was alive and living in Israel.

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