Image shows Rihanna at the 2024 Met Gala.

Many celebrities walked the 2024 Met Gala red carpet in extravagant looks inspired by nature, in keeping with this year’s theme. But contrary to social media users’ claims, Rihanna was not among them.

A May 6 Facebook post included an image of singer Rihanna wearing a cream-colored dress with a long floral train and a dramatic, circular silhouette covered in branching green leaves, flowers and birds.

The caption read, “Rihanna attends The #MetGala.”

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

(Screengrab from Facebook)

The Met Gala benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. This year’s theme was “The Garden of Time.” But Rihanna wasn’t there.

Rihanna told ExtraTV about a week before the Met Gala that she planned to attend. People magazine reported May 6, the day after the event, that Rihanna didn’t attend because she had the flu.

The singer and entrepreneur is known for her buzz-worthy red carpet looks. The most recent Met Gala she attended was in 2023. The photo in the Facebook post does not match any of Rihanna’s past Met Gala looks.

Looking closely at the photo reveals hints that it was likely generated with artificial intelligence.

(Image from Facebook)

The carpet doesn’t match the 2024 Met Gala carpet, which was cream colored and had moss green accents along the edges. And the fake photo’s flower-studded hedges along the carpet’s perimeter are the wrong color; the flowers were white.

The photographers in the background also had some inconsistencies common among AI-generated images, including distorted hands.

PolitiFact recently fact-checked different photos that falsely claimed to show Katy Perry at the Met Gala. These images were AI-generated.

We rate the claim that a photo shows Rihanna at the 2024 Met Gala Pants on Fire!