Is that Donald Trump ‘in the hood’? No. That’s an altered image.


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In the photo, former President Donald Trump stands, serious-faced, in a group of Black men. Behind them, a water-stained stucco building shows cracks and a low-hanging wire stretches through the air over their heads.

“Why is Obama never in the hood?” read a May 14 tweet that shared the image.

Despite the implied comparison, this photo doesn’t show Trump “in the hood” either. It appears to have been created by artificial intelligence.

Hive Moderation, a program that detects images from AI image generators such as DALL-E and Midjourney, showed a 99.8% likelihood that the image was AI-generated.

One telltale sign of an AI-generated photo is that the hands look deformed, as AI image generators often fail to capture human hands. In the photo, the right hand of the man standing to Trump’s left looks unusual.

AI photo screenshot 5-16-2023
Figure 1: Screenshot of hands on the AI-generated photo

A reverse-image search of this photo using Google Images, TinEye and Yandex showed no results from official or credible sources.

We rate this claim False.

By
Loreben Tuquero
Staff writer
May 16, 2023

Truth-o-meter Ruling

False

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

  • This photo was generated by artificial intelligence.

Statement

Photo shows former President Donald Trump “in the hood.”

Context

a tweet

Speaker/Target

Speaker: X posts

Statement Date

May 14, 2023
Our Sources

Tweet, May 14, 2023

Hive Moderation AI-generated image detection tool

The New Yorker, The Uncanny Failures of A.I.-Generated Hands, March 10, 2023

Translations

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