An image of French President Emmanuel Macron and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shaking hands was shared alongside a picture of France’s Marshal Phillipe Petain greeting Adolf Hitler with the caption, “France: Surrendering to evil since 1940.”
However, the image of Macron greeting Khamenei is AI-generated.
The photo collage
shows an authentic image of Petain, who led the French
government established in Vichy, opens new tab
during Germany’s occupation of much of the country in World War Two, shaking hands with Hitler. Below it, is the synthetic image of Macron with Khamenei.
Reuters Image
In the past, Macron has condemned Petain, who collaborated with Nazi Germany, but praised his World War One military record. This has drawn criticism from Jewish groups, political opponents and on social media.
The image of Petain and Hitler in the photo collage is an
authentic photograph, opens new tab
and can be found on the Imperial War Museum’s website with the description, “Philippe Petain, head of the French collaborationist government based at Vichy, shakes hands with Adolf Hitler, when they met at Montoire sur le Loire, 24 October 1940.”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has
footage from the Petain-Hitler meeting, opens new tab
. The moment the two of them are photographed while shaking hands, captured from another angle, can be seen around timestamp 00:33.
An
from Oct. 5, 2024, initially shared the photo collage. The user who posted it has since clarified online that the Macron-Khamenei image was
created using Grok, opens new tab
, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot, inspired by a photograph of Macron with former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The Sept. 20, 2022, photograph shows Macron meeting Raisi during talks held in New York and can be found on the
Islamic Republic News Agency’s website, opens new tab
.
Siwei Lyu, professor of computer science and engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, also told Reuters that visual artifacts in the Macron-Khamenei image suggest it is AI-generated.
“The teeth of President Macron have an unnatural look – this is possibly because the current generative AI models are not sufficiently trained with images of side faces,” Lyu said in an email.
Lyu also highlighted that the
shape of the ear, opens new tab
is directly related to an individual’s identity and that the shape of the right ear in an official image of Macron and that in the image shared online do not match.
A
side-by-side comparison, opens new tab
of the image shared online and a Reuters photograph of Macron shows some differences.
James O’Brien, professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, also highlighted Macron’s teeth being distorted and unnaturally blurred and said the image is altered or completely fake.
O’Brien pointed out inconsistencies in clothing, stating Macron’s right arm did not show buttons, as is typical of men’s suits, and that the pattern in the garment under Khamenei’s robe is broken up and does not match with real photos of Khamenei.
VERDICT
Synthetic media. The image of French President Emmanuel Macron with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is AI-generated.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab